313: What's Going On? Hollie McKay's Recent 5-month Trip in Afghanistan

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:19 - Hollie McKay back from Afghanistan 2:27:59 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:51:50 - Closing gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 313 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. He looks like any other ordinary young Afghan. A dusting of a dark beard, sun-leathered face, a small child clinging to his side. Only Nazefullah, 24, is a proud member of Afghan's ISIS affiliate known as ISIS-K, or informally as Dash. He has long been wanted by everyone, from US troops and the now-defunct Afghan Security Forces and the Taliban, formerly known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  Nazefullah says he joined the terrorist group around five years ago out of frustration that the Taliban was dishonest about the status of its shadowy leader. “We kept asking the Taliban to show us video of Mullah Omar, but we couldn’t get any,” he claims. “That is why the Dash here was created. They seemed truthful and said they were going to implement Sharia law, so that is why I joined them.” Taliban founder Omar died in 2013, yet it was kept secret for more than two years. “Most ISIS-K recruits are believed to have defected from Taliban branches in Afghanistan

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  and neighboring Pakistan, seeking an even more extreme interpretation of Islam with more international, rather than domestic-centered, goals of caliphate control. Since then, the terrorist outfit has attracted a wealth of foreign recruits bent on attacking NATO, Afghan forces, and the insurgency-turned-Taliban government. Since the Emirate came to power on August 15th, ISIS-K has waged a deadly spat of suicide attacks and targeted bombings across multiple provinces and claimed dozens of lives. While some assaults have targeted the Taliban, the vast majority have been inflicted upon

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  innocent civilians, particularly the minority Shiite population.”

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  Nazifullah says he is unclear how many ISIS-K members are hidden inside Afghanistan. He spent the last year locked away in the country's notorious Bagram Prison, having been arrested by the previous Afghan government for his ISIS membership. However, when the Taliban swept to power in August, he says he was released, even though the new regime was aware of his checkered past. Nazifullah went straight back to the black-clad terror clan, but says he has since broken his leg, seemingly from an accidental discharge from his own rifle.

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  Yet he remains ready to take up arms again with a very specific goal in mind. "Our first target is to destroy Pakistan because the main reason for everything in Afghanistan is Pakistan," he vows. "When the Taliban were here, they were saying that we control 80% of the country, but they were not implementing Islamic rulings. That's why we stood up in when we started ISIS-K over in this area." Nazifullah continues, then in the parcel "under their dominance," the outfit immediately

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  began, quote, "implementing Islamic rulings like cutting hands and everything." "So that's when the Taliban got funding from Pakistan and started fighting us back," he claims with a big smile. "And at that time, Baghdadi announced the caliphate in our area, and we were on top. That's why we are against the Taliban." Although Nazifullah asserts that his outlawed group is, quote, "weak now" and attempts to downplay their lethality, their hard-line goals remain firmly in place. "We want to implement Sharia law.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  We want to implement the way our prophet was living, the way he was clothed, the dressing hijab was there. Currently, we don't have much to fight, but if you give me anything, I am going to fight Pakistan now."

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  Yet hauntingly, Nazifullah also makes it clear that ISIS-K has far more global-reaching ambitions.

• 4:50Jocko Willink?

  Whoever goes against Islam and against the Quran, he adds darkly, "We are against them."

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  And that is an article from knews.com. The article is written by Hollie McKay. Holly is a journalist, she's an author, she's a war reporter, and she is an extremely courageous human being. She's been on this podcast before, number 271, where she talked about her experiences in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which she chronicled in her incredible book, which is called Only Cry for the Living. And she's back with us again tonight to share with us her experiences from Afghanistan. Because she was there, she was there during the American

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  departure, the collapse of the government, and the rise to power and control of the Taliban.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  So Holly, welcome back. And I do mean that sincerely. I was watching through social media when you were in Afghanistan, and I was terribly worried about you. And we'll discuss why. I'm sure we'll get to some of that. It was definitely sketchy, to say the least. But for now, I am truly glad that you are here. And you went there for a reason, to learn, to capture what was happening, and you've done that. So let's talk about, let's talk about what you've been through. First of all, welcome back.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's strange adjusting. So it's been a few days, and I'm still getting used to no, you know, highway without bombed and potholes. And I'm like, oh, this is a nice road. Hang on a minute.

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  Just to set the stage a little bit, to, to bring you into Afghanistan, when you went back, when you went to Afghanistan this time, just to get where, what you stepped into. July 2, Germany and Italy withdraw from Afghanistan. That is the same time that America quietly...

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  And strangely left Bagram Air Base. July 8th, Biden announces that the war is going to be over and we're going to be out by August 31st. July 12th, General Miller, who is the commander commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, he steps down. And by the way, this is right as Taliban is seizing district after district. By mid-July, they seized, you know, 140 or 150 districts inside of Afghanistan. July 21st, General Milley reports that half the districts in Afghanistan are under Taliban control.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  So July 22nd, the US House of Representatives, they they pass a bill for visas for our interpreters and and other allies that were there. And the reason I bring that up is because that turned into a big deal as everything shut down. And so that's what we're going into. It's very obvious, and I forget the quote from General Milley, but it was something along the lines of

• 8:18Jocko Willink?

  everyone was surprised at how fast it was collapsing, but it was collapsing quick. So August 7th is when you arrive in Kabul.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  What was your purpose in going there? Did you did you know how fast it was falling down? Did you like, hey, this isn't going to make it? I'm going to go in there anyways. What was that? What was the thought process there?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  So I made the decision, I think it was around May, June, that I was going to go back in August with my photographer Jake, who is Australian, who's also spent a lot of time, he lived in Afghanistan and spent a lot of time in in other places. So we thought we would go back and document what I thought was going to be the the last month of the Americans being there and then the Afghan government trying to stand on its own two feet. So between making that decision and what happened, it just you couldn't, you could, I just, I did not realize it was going to happen that quickly. And so when I arrived, even that first week, I was going to meetings at NDS, which is the Afghan Intelligence.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  I was going to meet with all these different people and everybody was just so convinced that it wasn't going to fall immediately, at least not within, say, that month. And it's so the speed of it and I've had to do so much reflection on this and looking back and going, where did you miscalculate? How did this sort of happen so quickly? And it really just goes to show, I think nobody really had any idea at the end of the day. I think there were there were sort of intelligence failures on many different levels from many different from parts of it.

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  I've talked about some of this. If I'm a company commander and I'm in charge of training Afghan forces, I want to do a good job. And when I report to my battalion commander and I, you know, the first I'm working with these guys for a month and, you know, he says, how are those guys? And I say, well, they got some work to do. They're not that great. They're deficient here, they're deficient there, they're not good at this. And my battalion commander says, okay, well, you know, get them squared away. The next month, what do I say? You know, I'm gonna tend to say, yeah, well, we're making some improvements. We're doing a little bit better. We've got them issued better gear.

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  We got the supply issues taken care of that we were worried about. We did a live fire training operation. And so you end up, just by virtue of having a positive attitude, which Americans certainly have, we end up painting a better picture than what is actually happening. I saw this, I try to think if I did this, I believe I did. I believe that I did in training Iraqi forces would sometimes say, you know, I would put some lipstick on, on the situation a little bit. Again, trying to have a positive attitude, trying to look at the brightest side of what was happening.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  And there was times in Iraq where the Iraqis would take over a position and the insurgents would immediately attack it and crush them. And so we got put in check a few times. I would almost say luckily. Because that what that caused us to do was to be very honest about the capabilities, the people we were working with. So there is actual times where the Iraqis would take over, let's say, a checkpoint. We'd say, yep, they're good to go. And this is when I say we, I mean coalition forces in general, you know, the Americans that are there said, yes, we've been working with these Iraqis. They can handle this checkpoint. We'd step away from the checkpoint. And this happened almost immediately upon my arrival. This

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  checkpoint got taken over by the Iraqis and the insurgents attacked it a day later, two days later. They killed the American advisor that was there, actually two American advisors that were there, overran it. It was total disaster. And that happened when I first showed up. So it really put us in check in terms of, okay, what do we need to be very cautious about what we report up the chain of command and when they're actually ready. But at the same time, you know, my guess is, and even when we left Iraq, I was very worried. I was very worried when America left Iraq, when coalition forces left Iraq, I thought to myself, they can't, they're not ready yet. And there's a, there's

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  a similar, obvious similar theme here. So almost every, I never fought in Iraq, in Afghanistan, but everyone that I know that worked on the ground with the Afghan forces were all not surprised. Hey, they weren't ready yet. They just weren't ready yet. And it's a huge, it's, it's, it's almost like when you have these, these elements, the US support is really like the long pole in the tent. And all the other tent poles and the canvas that goes over the tent is, and the stakes that go on the ground, all those things are really, really important. And you can build those up and you can make them really good and you could, they can provide you shelter from the rain and shelter

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  from the wind. But if you pull out that one long pole in the middle.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  It has a huge negative impact and and that's sort of again in hindsight as I look at it. That's what that's one of the things I think happened.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there were just multiple things. I think even right down to the number of ghost soldiers. So on paper, there might be three hundred thousand Afghan soldiers when there's in reality, there's a quarter of that. Because people would take commanders were taking money of people that never existed or they were dead. Or there was no accountability. Um, you know, I can I can go into corruption for days in in how that really destroyed Afghanistan and.

• 14:14Jocko Willink?

  So to drill into that corruption that you just talked, let me let me see if I got this little piece of it right.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:18Jocko Willink?

  I'm a commander. I'm a I'm an Afghan commander. If I say I have five hundred soldiers, I get X amount of money.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:25Jocko Willink?

  So guess how many I have? Seven hundred.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  And and and two of you guys die, you're not going to report that because you still want to keep getting their money to the point where they would take the bank cards of the dead soldiers and go to the bank and get them their paychecks every week or every month. Like i i it's the level and we can get into this, but in my I've never seen a more corrupt place on every possible level. And yet,

• 14:52Speaker 01

  you know, we and when I say we, I say the United States, we turned a blind eye to that for for really twenty years instead of going to the root and fixing it. We let it fester and create this entire industry of corruption, which is what the Taliban was not only able to capitalize on, but they came in saying, well, we're not going to be corrupt and people that don't even like the Taliban's were so fed up with that corruption that they were going to support that even if they didn't support the ideology.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  So you get there on the seventh, the eighth and ninth, you're meeting with intel people.

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  It's still not clear that this thing is gonna fall apart, or are you, or is it starting to look that way?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there was this idea of Kabul was never going to fall. And certain pockets like Kabul, Pangia, you know, even Mazar, which is where I ended up. These were very, very staunch resistance places and there was sort of this idea that how can they possibly fall? And so I, I met with and I had actually stayed with him in two thousand and eighteen in Ankara was General Dustum. So General Dustum was the, the warlord, I guess, who the US troops first went in with from the north during, um, after nine eleven. And that's where Mike Spann was killed and sort of the first people there. So I'd met him several years ago, um, in Turkey and, and did a profile with him.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And so he invited me to go back to Mazar because he was leading some resistance forces there that were working with the Afghan commandos. And yeah, it was just sort of this idea and I, I guess, looking back, it was, you know, selling a story that didn't exist. But we decided, okay, well, let's go uncover what's happening in Mazar. Even though the northern provinces surrounding it were all sort of falling, there was this sense that Mazar was going to hold. So we went to Mazar. It was, uh, very early on a Thursday morning.

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  How'd you get up there?

• 16:44Speaker 01

  We flew.

• 16:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, Kemer. And so it's about a fifty minute flight from Kabul to Mazar. And so we get there.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you say a fifty minute flight?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, fifty minute flight.

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  And was this, who, who's, who's flying the helicopters? Is this just charter?

• 16:59Speaker 01

  This is a commercial airline.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  Just a commercial airline?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I flew a commercial airline two weeks ago, so they still exist. I was glad to land that one because there was no landing lights. Um, but, but they're still a commercial airline, so we flew to Mazar. Cause at this point, you couldn't travel on roads anywhere, which isn't something else that's changed significantly now. But, but then you couldn't, you, you could, the Taliban had really cut off every strategic road. And you couldn't go much beyond sort of Kabul, maybe Kabul to Pangia, but that was a sort of the most road travel you could do. So we flew to Mazar. That was really early in the Thursday morning. And you get there and it was just this incredibly vibrant place. And I just remember it was the.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  How, how is there, how are all these provinces around this place falling to the Taliban? When the markets would just chalk a block and everybody is just going about their daily business. I just, I was flabbergasted and I thought, isn't like what is happening? And you go and sort of talk to people and they'd be, oh, I'm a little bit worried, but it's okay. I think it'll be okay. We'll just flee to Kabul. Um, so that was the Thursday and everything, yeah, it's very normal.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So your feeling was, okay, well, obviously this is gonna be okay.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I, you know, had a couple of friends who were very worried about me being in Mazar. And I, I was sort of like, it seems fine to me. Um, but, but what did really struck me as, as weird was that there was no police. There was no military presence on the street at all. I didn't see a single like Afghan forces come through and I, I thought that was strange. I thought, where is, where is this? Like this is city, this is in the middle of a, a firestorm here and there is zero security forces right now. So that struck me as strange, but everybody was going about life. And then the next day, Friday, which is the weekend day in Afghanistan, but still things were out.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  And I was going out interviewing people, just asking them how they felt, people in the markets. And people were starting to feel really worried. They said, well, you know, we think it's gonna fall, but we just don't know when it's going to happen. And as the day progressed, you felt it get a little bit, people were becoming more tense. And we'd go to this, there's a beautiful big blue mosque, a big shrine there that's, that's quite famous. And there were just a lot of people that had fled from other villages and other provinces. And they were all sort of hanging out outside this mosque. And, and by the evening, things were still happening, but I, you know, I said to Jake, my photographer, hey, we need to book this return flight back to Kabul. And so I get online and I'm like, the earliest flight we can get is Monday night.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  And I was like, I, I think it's, you know, I called a few people. I was like, is it gonna hold? Um, and they were like, yeah, you know, you should be fine, but, but get out on the next flight you can get back to, to Kabul. And so I, I booked the flight.

• 19:59Jocko Willink?

  So you're online booking a flight, which means you're online watching news and seeing updates from other things.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  And it's still, you got the impression, because I'm, I don't remember exactly, I knew that you were in Mazar through social media.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  Because you're, you're like posting about this stuff.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  But I also remember seeing, you know, sort of the battle map of what's happening and seeing the various provident provinces collapse around.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 20:25Jocko Willink?

  And I just remember thinking, get, please get out of there.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Hmm. So, yeah, and I remember thinking that too, and I thought, this isn't, this, this doesn't feel right. But that night, we went out with the commandos, the Afghan commandos to, and they were taking a lot of hits and a lot of, you know, a lot of fighting, but they were such extraordinary. And again, you know, this, this perhaps warped my thinking a little bit too, but you had these men who were just like, we will never give this up. They will never get Mazar. We will, you know, and, and defend it and hold it and just really great young men. And we stayed out with them until about two o'clock that morning. And there was this sort of strange sense with, with one of them, his name was Safi. And, and he kept, you could tell how much he missed the West. He wanted us to stay and drink beer with him and, and listen to music and he just, he didn't want us to leave.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  He just, he wanted, he wanted this sense of this connection to, to the West that I think that, you know, been trained by the Americans and just had this sort of deep love. Um, so two o'clock came, we got the guys to take us back to our hotel and we're supposed to go out with them again at around seven or eight that morning. So we wake up on the Saturday and I'm waiting for a call from him. He's not there, he's not answering his phone. And I thought, you know, God, I hope he's okay. This is strange. I don't know what to do, but I will just wait for him to contact me again. Um, and then we thought, well, let's go out and do some stories. And we tried to contact some fixers or interpreters that we had known lived there. Everyone had fled to Kabul. We could not find anybody.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Eventually, by mid morning, we found somebody who knew somebody who said that he could, he could come and be an interpreter if we did some interviews. And so we went out and it was just suddenly this ghost town from this, it had gone from extremely vibrant, you know, place to this complete ghost town. You just saw people lining up outside banks, just trying to get their money out. Um, and we're walking and people are just fleeing from the outside villages into Mazar on those little rickshores and, you know, with all their stuff and, and. We met with this interpreter and we get into a cab and we're driving out toward, there was three front lines.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  And the interpreter, who I didn't really know too well, um, is on the phone as we're driving and it's about midday. And he, suddenly he looks at me and he turns around, he's got this big smile on his face. And he says, oh, they just broke through the, the first of the three lines. And it's surrounded. And we looked at each other and, and the cab driver's like, I'm really scared. Cause we were sort of driving toward it and I said, okay, that's fine. We'll, we'll turn around and go back. It's no big deal. Um, so we went back and I went.

• 23:03Jocko Willink?

  You had this detail that you just gave, which was, he was smiling.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, and I still can't figure out why he was smiling, if he just didn't care, or if he was a Taliban, or if he just was trying to appease me, so I wasn't worried.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  He thought, hey, I'm getting to get you some stories. They just broke through. Here we go.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's sitting there on the phone, he's like, turns around and it's just this, they just broke through the first. And, and I'm like, okay. Um, so I get back to the hotel and I'm trying to make some phone calls, cause like, there's no, there's no flight out that I can get earlier than that Monday. And there's no way it can, you know, it's a ten hour drive, but there's no way I could even attempt to do that drive, cause it's all Taliban controlled. And so I'm making some calls to, you know, again, to my intel contacts in Kabul. And even then, they're saying, no, no, no, it should hold. It'll hold, don't worry. Um, and I was starting to get pretty worried and I was distracting myself, you know, doing some work and things and then. And then we normally go to this, there was a kebab cafe that we'd always go to each night.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  And it was a really lively place. It was underground. They would play these terrible soap operas, but there was always like a lot of people there playing music. And so Jake and I said, okay, well, let's go to this kebab cafe. And we step out and it's just pitch black and not a single person around. And I'm still figuring out, we walk to this kebab cafe and it's open. We're like, oh, it's open. And we go downstairs and the TV is off and there's just these, the two guys that work there that are just sitting there. And we order food and we're sitting there and then we just look at each other and we're like, something is really, really wrong. We need to go. And so we get up and we start hurrying back toward the hotel. And this was early evening around seven and then you just see these motorcycles coming in and that's the Taliban.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  And so we sort of hurry back just in time to get to our hotel and go to the roof. And I'm just looking out and the Taliban is just circling. There's just hundreds of them and they're shooting in the air and they're playing the neshid, which is their religious music. And, and celebrating that they just took a city without firing a shot, basically. Um, but what also struck me during the day, and that was the other bizarre thing, I thought here is a city that's falling. And there was no air power. There was not a sound in the air. And I remember that something and I did a little video about it. I was like, where is the air power? Didn't we train? Didn't we put just tens, hundreds of millions of dollars into this Afghan air force? Where the hell is it? Cause I don't hear it.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  And, and air power is a great example of the long pole in the tent, right? That if you have air power, when the Taliban's coming in on their motorcycles and in their trucks, it, it, they can't. They literally can't do it. And that's the long pole in the tent that falls apart when that happens. You know, it's, um, as you were talking about, like the, talking to one of the Afghan soldiers that you knew. And how he, you know, hey, we're going to stay here. We're going to fight. They'll never take us. Do you remember all that stuff that happened up in Portland when the Antifa took over the part of the,

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Jocko Willink?

  Part of the neighborhood or whatever they were calling it. I think it was originally called CHOP. And then they changed it to CHAZ, but it was the occupied zone or something like this. But somebody was asking me about it and I kind of said, hey, there's no one up there in the CHOP. That's like ready to die for the cause. That's ready to say, you know what? We're going to stay here. We're. They're just not, they're just not up there. There's no, I mean, America, and I kind of made the comment that, hey, even the people that are Antifa members, guess what? They have cell phones and they have, you know, like, nice, they have clothing and they have running water and it's just not that bad of a thing. And they're not right that committed to it. And it's, it's

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  interesting when you think about what it really takes for someone to stand up and be willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause, whatever that cause is. And when you look at the Taliban, and you, you're this Afghan person that's been fighting for however many years, and you've been fighting for the Americans, you've been fighting for the Afghan government for 10 years or seven years. And then you're like, well, it looks like we're completely surrounded. If I fight, I'm gonna die, or I can just kind of put down my weapon, take off my uniform and carry on with my life.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And I, yeah, and that was, you know, I, and I think it was sort of the next day, well, Joe Biden came out and said, you know, these guys ran away from their posts and things. And, and to a degree, I understand where that came from, but it actually, it upset me because

• 27:47Speaker 01

  they were really sold out by their leadership. And, and I'll give you examples. So Safi, the guy that I'd met that Friday, when I was finally able to get back in contact with him after Mazar had fallen, and I asked him, are you okay? Where are you? And he said, you know, he'd gone out that day and, and they just, they were so outnumbered and his three bodyguards had been killed. And, um, you know, it was really the commanders that were trying to hold it. And he said by four o'clock that afternoon, somebody came to him and said, oh, Dustin left. And so did the commander left, like, oh, your commanders left and it's up to you if you want to stay and die, or you can leave. And he just, he, they were sold out by everybody.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  I, I did hear stories, um, from guys that I knew that said that the Taliban would like approach a village.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  And just send a messenger in there and be like, hey, you know, here's your chance. We know you were, you know, you, we know you were Afghan security. Um, you can put down your guns and be cool.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  Or we're gonna kill everyone. And guys were like, uh, okay, we're surrounded, we're gonna die. Um, I guess we'll just.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  Go back to the way it used to be, by the way. That's the other thing. It was they have sort of a lot of them had memory of what it used to be like. And it's like, okay, well, I guess we're going back to the way it used to be. But it's better to do that and be alive than be dead.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Hmm. And the amount of sacrifices that a lot of those Afghan soldiers made, I mean, they don't, they won't even release the number of killed, but it's it's well past a hundred thousand.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, there was at least fifty thousand killed going into this whole thing taking place.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:20Jocko Willink?

  So it it's not like, and and again, there's plenty of Americans that fought alongside the Afghans and had had met awesome Afghan troops, just like in Iraq, you know, there was and by the time you were in Iraq and the the Iraqis were fighting ISIS, they were taking massive casualties, massive casualties going to take Mosul back. That was led by the Iraqi forces. And they took massive casualties and they kept going compared to in in the Battle of Amadi, the Iraqi forces were some of them were very scared and didn't want to take lead and definitely didn't want to take casualties. We had a whole battalions abandon and leave. So that idea of this kind of

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  this kind of clear cut American version of the way things are is doesn't apply here. There's no clear cut way of, hey, oh, if you get capped, you're an American, you get captured, we know what's gonna happen. You're gonna get tortured, you're gonna get killed. It's like, hey, you're an Afghan security force and you surrender? You're not sure what's gonna happen, but you know what's gonna happen. If you don't surrender, you're gonna die. So and then you see your leadership.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  All running away, all running away, all of them.

• 30:37Jocko Willink?

  And

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Every single one of them ran away, including the president.

• 30:40Jocko Willink?

  Including the president.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:41Jocko Willink?

  Including the president, who?

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, with that guy, that is a, is an insane situation. I mean, you have that guy, Ashraf Ghani, who, who is like a professor at Berkeley, a professor at Johns Hopkins, uh, went to some leadership school at Harvard, wrote the book called Fixing Failed States, which is like an academic exploration of this stuff, theoretical. It's an embarrassment.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:12Jocko Willink?

  And he bailed with a bunch of money, by the way.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  And, and yeah, a bunch of money is now under investigation. But what, what I remember going back in, being Afghanistan in 2017 and sort of hearing when I'd go to the, the NATO compound of the US embassy and everyone would say all these great things about Ghani. And I remember saying to a few people, have you gone out to the street just to talk to the Afghan people? Cause they have a different idea, you know? So I think part of that problem was the US, because nobody was leaving that base in the diplomacy world, they were getting a vacuum of information that was pre-approved people to enter. They were all part of this sort of puppetry stream and they weren't actually out there talking to the Afghans who were terribly frustrated with the corruption going on, terribly frustrated with the, sort

• 31:57Speaker 01

  of, I guess, the, the Pashtun and the sectarianism and, and things. And it just, the picture that was, was so warped compared to the reality that I saw even back then.

• 32:09Jocko Willink?

  And that was, so 2017, you're out talking to normal people and they're totally frustrated with Ghani and yet the Americans are getting this whitewashed version of how, how he's doing an excellent job.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:25Jocko Willink?

  When, so it was like August 14th. So Mazar Falls, Kabul Falls too.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  So that was the, so that was the Saturday night. So, you know, suddenly I'm like in the, in this room, in this hotel and, and the, the locals had all fled and there were no foreigners in there, except I think there was a guy from Tajikistan who, who was there for a couple of days and someone else. But so we, Jake and I look at each other and we said, well, what are we, what are we gonna do? Um, you know, we're making some calls and I'm speaking to some, some DOD people in Kabul. And they said, well, you know, go and get us measurements, go and get us coordinates, go and get us this and that, and we'll see if we can get you out in the morning, the early morning. And it was an interesting night. So you had, um,

• 33:11Speaker 01

  You had, you know, us trying to get all this information and then

• 33:16Speaker 01

  the morning and the Taliban's were out having a crazy, you know, Taliban party all night. Um, and so by the morning light, I thought, well, they'd gone to sleep then because they celebrated all night and they'd gone to sleep, but then you know, nobody's calling. Um, they were just sort of looking at each other going, well, now is kind of the chance to get out in this period where they're not in the street because they're going to be in the street in a couple of hours. Um, but it became very evident that just it wasn't going to happen. And then then that Sunday, we started seeing news reports that the, that the Taliban's were at the gates of Kabul. And then the next thing you know, they're taking the palace and we just sort of, I looked at, I looked at Jake when that happened and I said, well, yeah, we're pretty much, we've got to figure this out.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  Were you feeling, were you feeling threatened with, when the Taliban showed up? So the images that they were portraying of the Taliban was, uh, was like a, a kinder, gentler Taliban was coming in, right? It was like you said, it was, it was like celebratory.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  It didn't look like a angry mob. It looked like a happy mob that was celebrating and that, that was sort of the images that we got initially. Then it quickly turned into images of people being, people being killed, people being murdered. Um, but what was your initial impression?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  My initial impression was, it was just bizarre because they were, I was like, who are these barbarians in the street? Like, how is this like, and then they're doing announcements over the loudspeaker and it was so strange because you saw this instant transformation of a, of a city and, and they did, they did look a little, you know, intimidating. There were just so many of them. And that was the thing. I thought, where did these people come from? Because Mazar was a very strong Taliban resistance place and suddenly it's just, there's hundreds of them and I don't know where you, they come from. And I, I sent Jake out to buy me a burger at the market and he just came back. He's like, oh my God. They're just, they're crazy, you know? And so we were trying to, I guess, figure out.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  What did he mean by crazy?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  He just like, they're, they're, they're just everywhere.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  And they're just, you know, that they literally have sort of the dominance of, of every corner possible in the city. And that was their strategy. I think in the very beginning, when they took places, they just flooded it with fighters to make sure that they could hold it.

• 35:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, a normal person would like concentrate on hiding and getting out of there, but you kind of focused on let's go interview people.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  So not, not quite. So I, I mean, at first I went a little quiet. I was like, I don't know. And I was trying to pretend to my parents. I wasn't in the city because straight away my dad's like, we just heard on the news, Muzazful. And are you there? I said, no, I'm outside the city. Um, so I was trying to, yeah, to try to appease them a little bit, but uh, so I was a little unclear and, and what sort of had concerned me at that point was, I know that first night that they came in and there was a bank underneath the hotel. So they were, so the Taliban's were desperately trying to get into the hotel where we were and we knew that we were the only foreigners in there at that point. And,

• 36:21Speaker 01

  and these incredible hotel staff had stayed there for us and they were terrified because they'd all been former NDS or previously worked in different capacities with the Afghans. And I knew that they were desperately wanting to, to go home to, you know, safety or flee or their families, but they really stayed there for us. And that was um, just something that I thought was just extraordinary. And it goes back to that Afghan hospitality and, and care. Um, so we were there and, and several days are going by and the focus was to get out, but it just, it became so, and I, my phone was just blowing up with so many different people telling me, do this, do this, do this. And I was just like, you all need to leave me alone at this point, please, because it's not helping. Um,

• 37:04Speaker 01

  and I said to, you know, the US people that I was speaking to right from the beginning, I think the only way is you go and talk, like I need to go and talk to them to get their permission to leave. Because there really wasn't another way. There wasn't really a way that I felt that I could sneak out or, you know, go under the radar. And yeah, that was, that was what I was pushing for from the beginning. So that was sort of my focus in, in doing that.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  So it falls on like the fourteenth fifteenth and you spend the next few days trying to figure out.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  What the best course of action is.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  And so what'd you finally figure out?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  So um yeah, we I talked to so many different people and I thought, you know, any sort of rescue, any whatever is not gonna happen. So. I talked to a couple of diplomats and then I talked to um sort of, I guess, a middle person who was a Afghan business guy. And so it was very, very quick. And then he sort of said, well, I'll come to the hotel. Um, and you know, be ready at this time and. They teed some things up with the Uzbek consul, which was closed. But they were able to kind of get it open. So next thing you know, I'm dragging my stuff down. And the two people that come to meet me is my drivers, the two Taliban elders, you know, the cousin of the. His shadow governor turned new governor. So you see these sort of old Taliban guys and.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  And I'm getting into the car with them and they were like, welcome. It was so bizarre. Joko, it was. I was like, what? Hi. Um, because at that point, we really didn't know.

• 38:37Jocko Willink?

  It's just you and Jake getting into this car?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, just Jake and I getting into the car with the Taliban's. And we didn't know at that point, you know, how they're gonna treat a foreigner, how they were going to treat a woman, how they were going to treat a journalist. Um, and so, yeah, they they drove us through the city and I so I said, do you mind if I have a talk to you and ask you some questions? And they said, sure. And um, you know, telling me about, I'm asking them about their, how they viewed Islamic law and Sharia law and what they wanted. And they just sort of said, well, you know, we want people's hands to be topped off and they steal and if you murder, then you should. Eye for an eye kind of thing and and telling me all about their their rulings and um. But at the same time, they're like, yeah, you you're welcome in Afghanistan. You're welcome to stay as long as you like.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And uh, we hope you enjoy our country. And it was very bizarre. And then we. We're dropped off at the Uzbek consul and then suddenly these other Taliban's came. Um, and they were, there's a group of them, really young ones, like in their early twenties. And they were going to be our escort and the only way sort of because we couldn't go back to Kabul was to go north to the Uzbek border. And so you had these bunch of these young Taliban's who were just, who wanted to take selfies. And, you know, continue to send, they continued to send long after that. My photographer, you know, selfies of themselves with, you know, Urdu music in the background and love heart emojis. It's literally the most bizarre thing you could imagine.

• 40:04Jocko Willink?

  I know, I was looking at pictures um on some of your articles, you have pictures of these Taliban guys. Like with their iPhones or whatever.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:14Jocko Willink?

  Out, they're doing selfies.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:16Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking for social media.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they, and they harass and, and I know with, there was a couple of other photographers that I know and they harass. Poor Jake and any other photographers get harassed for their photos. So if you take a picture of a Taliban's, oh, I need your WhatsApp, I need your WhatsApp and then they just harass and they want pictures of themselves. Like it's just, it's so new to them. These are people who were in hiding in the mountains for twenty years and then suddenly. They're like out and free and kind of a spectacle. It's, it's very bizarre.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  How does selfies and Instagram match up with Sharia law? I'm not sure about that one.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  I guess it's, it's too new for Sharia maybe.

• 40:55Jocko Willink?

  How does that work?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  They haven't brought a ruling on it yet.

• 40:58Jocko Willink?

  Um, man, that's crazy. Um, so you, were you at any point? At what point did you go, I think I'm gonna be okay? Did the old Taliban make you feel that way? Did the young Taliban make you feel that way?

• 41:12Speaker 01

  I think, well, I did, I did feel like I was going to be okay even when I was stuck in the hotel. I think the first night I was a little bit, well, you, you had a normal sense of fear, I guess. I certainly, I didn't panic, but I, I was a little bit thrown. This wasn't in the plan. Um, at all and, but well, actually it's the small things that make you feel good. I remember this, this young man from the hotel came up to me and he said, and he put the manager of the hotel on the phone to me, the owner. And the owner said to me, don't worry, I've already talked to the Taliban's and they promised not to enter the hotel. And I thought that was just like Christmas. I was like, thank you. And I just, even though I didn't know whether that was true, whether they were gonna honor that, which they certainly weren't because they were trying to get in, but it was like

• 41:57Speaker 01

  just what I needed to hear at that point to give me that sense of calm that I needed to to focus on on what it is I needed to do.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  Um, in Mazar, I saw I saw images and it was pretty prominent in in the news back here, sort of as Kabul fell, like, uh, let's say there was like a women's clothing boutique.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 42:17Jocko Willink?

  And then they showed the next day and it'd be gone, or it'd be now whatever, selling shovels or something like that. Did Mazar go through that really rapid transition from like more Western influence just to boom overnight all of a sudden?

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was very overnight. And mind you, that was that was self censorship. That wasn't the Taliban going around telling them they had to.

• 42:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was me going, oh, you know, I'm not gonna be selling these women's freaking bikinis anymore. We're shutting it down.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, Mazar really was just this drastic. What I found fascinating was the the clothing transformation. So you see people, you know, walking around in Western jeans or whatever it is, and then suddenly everybody's in Afghan dress.

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  And very, very traditional. Um, and that was sort of the bizarre thing. And it took a couple of days before I saw a woman again on the street. And when I did, she was always in a burka.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  So that was very, it was, it it really felt like you went from one civilization and then you just plunged back a couple of hundred years overnight. And even just, there were these messages coming out of the speakers, which I'd never heard before in Mazar either. So the same speakers that they use for the call to prayer were suddenly delivering messages, you know, sort of town hall messages to people, you know, telling them that, um, you know, if anybody steals from them or anybody does anything, then they're to call this number or come to this place to report it. And so you have this immediate sense of the Taliban's trying to to govern suddenly. But yeah, it was so drastic that that transformation.

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  So how do you get up to the Uzbek border? Just driving up there?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  The Taliban's. So the Taliban's took us. I know. So the Taliban's take us to the Uzbek border, which Uzbek border is closed, but the again, that they, you know, so a couple of really amazing diplomats in in Tashkent, which is capital of Uzbekistan, had made arrangements with the Uzbek consulate to open the border, which I actually found out I didn't even need because both of us had Australian passports and we didn't need a visa for Uzbekistan, but Americans do. So I could have gone anywhere, I guess, but they had to open it specially for us because it was closed. Because the night before, when Mazar had fall, or the night, the nights before, when Mazar had fallen, the soldiers flooded that border because they had nowhere else to go. So they really flooded that border and you drive along the way and you just see all the, you know,

• 44:33Speaker 01

  the American vehicles and the Humvees and everything just abandoned and left behind. And the weapons still lying on the road and the, you know, the fatigues and.

• 44:42Jocko Willink?

  And these were just Afghan soldiers.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  These were just Afghan soldiers.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  And they were going for Uzbekistan.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, because that was the closest route that they could go to get out. And so I think they let a certain amount in and then they just shut the border.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  How hard was it if I was a corporal or a private in the Afghan army? And the Taliban's coming, how hard is it for me to be able to like take off my uniform, grab some traditional clothing and leave and get away with it?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  You wouldn't be able to get out of the country. I mean, they weren't taking anyone.

• 45:10Jocko Willink?

  And how about my identity as far as, hey, I'm just going to go back to my home, wherever in this village and just kind of take up life as a normal farmer or whatever?

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I mean, you could go and do that. I think eventually they'd track you down and not, and I think this was also a bit of a misnomer that happened in the beginning, was people were talking a lot, especially in the news. They were, oh, Taliban's got a list. They're coming to houses. They're getting, you know, X, Y, Z. They're targeting so and so. And when I, I looked into it, they weren't really necessarily, and of course, there are some people, there are exceptions, but their overall goal wasn't necessarily to target any of these soldiers. Their goal was to take back government weapons. So any government vehicles, any government issued guns, they needed to take them back. So the process is when somebody surrenders, they get, they hand over their weapon and they get given a letter from the Taliban. So the Taliban's give them a letter that basically says they've surrendered. This is their number. They're free to go.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Um. So, you know, when Taliban's approach, some of these soldiers, you know, they either have to show the letter. And if they don't have the letter, then the Taliban's will want to know where their weapon is and and and what they're doing kind of thing. So, yeah, it was it muddying.

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you now you're in Uzbekistan. You get there by what, August 20th, you're in Uzbekistan?

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Yes, around, yeah, August 20th.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  So at this time, it's getting it's getting crazier in Afghanistan. You got Biden and Biden is now on August 20th makes his promise that all American citizens are going to be brought home. August 23rd, the CIA Director William Burns meets with the leader of the Taliban, um, or one of one of the leaders of the Taliban, well, co-founder of the Taliban, actually, to start talking about how we're going to withdraw.

• 46:57Jocko Willink?

  That starts to happen. The withdrawal starts happening, um, August 26th. Uh, that's when this attack happens. Kills 13 US military personnel, 11 Marines, one, one Navy corpsman, one American soldier, about 70 odd Afghan civilians.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Hundred and eighty that went up.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  Hundred and eighty.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:23Jocko Willink?

  That happens on August 26th, um. August 29th, there's a drone strike

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  that is allegedly targeting um some ISIS K or some Taliban or and it ends up killing a USAID worker worker.

• 47:45Jocko Willink?

  A guy named Zamari Ahmad, he kills him, two other adults and seven kids.

• 47:56Jocko Willink?

  August 30th, there's some rocket attacks, uh, but August 30th is when the last US planes leave Afghanistan. The Taliban rolls into the airport, just rolls into the airport and declares victory. And so that there it is. Now the Taliban's in control.

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  At which point, is this when you go back in?

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was working between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and I would have gone back or tried to go back a little earlier. But, but when I met with these diplomats, um, you know, one of them sort of said to me and he had said, you know, cause he was sort of involved in being, you know, putting me in touch with the middleman to leave Afghanistan. And he sort of said, you know, I've been doing this for thirty, forty years and been in many war zones, sort of working. And he said, I've never felt more terrified when then I basically handed you over to the Taliban to get in their car to leave. And he said, I just, I was so relieved when you were okay. And I, out of respect to him, I didn't want to go back in straight away.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  So, but there was never a doubt in my mind that I was going to go back in. Of course, I didn't tell that to my parents or to anybody else. But I thought I, I planned to come and do a job. Um, I felt confident enough to go back because despite the hype that, that we were sort of seeing in the media and everybody trying to get out, I did know other, other sort of British journalists and things that had stayed, that were still in Kabul. And I felt confident enough that I could go back and, and, and be okay about it. And, um, so we, yeah, we made that decision to go back. And I thought, you know, I'll let this airport chaos die down. And so we'll go back in on the first and we'll drive back from the north, back from Uzbekistan border.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  And we'll take that, it's about a twelve hour drive across Afghanistan back to Kabul. Cause there really wasn't any other way. And yeah, that's, that's what we did. We, we came in, we crossed that bridge again, um, and I, you know, I still, and they were honoring the, the valid visa. So my visa was valid, um, media visa. And so I went back and, and we kind of went to this little passport hut and there was just a Taliban sitting in there. And he didn't ask a single question, just had a notebook, wrote it down, stamped with the Taliban stamp and we were good to go. So it was sort of that easy to go back and I thought, gosh.

• 50:27Jocko Willink?

  And then you're just driving south.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Then we're just driving. So we'd hired a driver, um, for friends of our friends who'd who'd come to pick us up. And so there was, you know, all of us jammed into this little Toyota Corolla, driving, you know, from that bridge down just through Solang Pass down into, yeah, it was about 12 hours.

• 50:46Jocko Willink?

  Are you and you're getting to checkpoints?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there was about 16 checkpoints.

• 50:50Jocko Willink?

  And what does that feel like?

• 50:52Speaker 01

  You know, they, and still now, they barely stop you when they see a woman. They see a woman, go, go, go, go, go. They're being basically instructed, or at least definitely at that point, they're instructed, don't question a woman, don't, um, you know, if there's a woman in the car, just let them go.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  Why is that?

• 51:05Speaker 01

  They're terrified of women. They're, they, they, yeah, they just, they, they think, they see it as a sign of respect. Don't question a woman, don't ask her who she, don't look at her, don't, um, question. Really only once we got stopped, um, I think at a checkpoint, they asked us sort of a few questions, looked at the passports and one of them pokes his head through the window. It was again, the, it's like being a clown show. And Jake said to this guy, how do you get your hair so shiny? Cause they've got this black hair that's floating around. And the guy looks, he goes, head and shoulders. And the whole thing was like, I was like, I don't know what movie I'm in right now, but this is crazy. Um, but yeah, so they, I barely got stopped at a checkpoint and, and suddenly we're back in Kabul.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  And really at that point, the only fighting that was really still happening was in Panjia. And that was sort of the last holdout that the Taliban's hadn't taken yet.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  So, and you ended up going up there, right?

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  And the reason you go, well, because there was, there was, there was anti-Taliban forces that fled there.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:13Jocko Willink?

  And they, they were flying the flag of the Northern Alliance up there. And it seemed like that could be sort of the.

• 52:21Jocko Willink?

  Like the

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Like the Montana. Or the, or you know what I'm saying, like the Wyoming of hey, hey, they might have taken the rest of America. This is like a Red Dawn scenario, right? These are the Wolverines up there thinking, all right, we're gonna go up there. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cuz I know Echo does cuz he, you know, he's very up to speed on, on those kind of movies. But that's what it was. That's what it seemed like up in Pangaea was, hey, we've got, this is the last holdout. We're like the Wolverines up there.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:50Jocko Willink?

  We, we're flying the old flag of the Northern Alliance and we've got experienced fighters. You're hearing that story. Did you, looking at it, think that they could hold out?

• 53:02Speaker 01

  So I was hearing a lot of information, people, we're gonna do this, this, this, and this. And I've spent a lot of time in Pangaea previously and I knew that there was a lot of great fighters, great guy, you know, people that, that fought during the Soviet occupation. And that was the only place the Taliban's never controlled during their reign in the nineties. They never got Pangaea, that was the one place. So they certainly had this, this mentality to hold. But at the same time, all the young men that I knew that had lived there had all fled to France, all of them. And I'm thinking, why have you fled to France? Why have you fled to France? Like, you should be here fighting for your province. Like, what is going on? So I was a little skeptical, to be honest, cuz I was hearing, especially from contacts of mine in the US who were like, we're gonna send them weapons and get this.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  And, and I remember just sort of thinking, I, I don't, I don't know if I'm buying this right now. So we decided, um, yeah, I was like, I need to get in. And, and there was still this debate going on, has it fallen, has it not fallen? Because the Taliban's were claiming in that sort of first week of September to have taken it. But then the NRF, as they're known, the National Resistance Front, was saying, no, no, no, we're still, we're still in control. And so nobody could figure it out because nobody could get in. The Taliban's were not letting anybody go into the province. And there's really terrible cell service there. It's just, it's always been terrible cell service there. So especially if you're in the mountains, you're not going to be able to report back.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  So there was this really crazy debates going on and, and again, where the misinformation was coming out of was this idea of, um, then people started saying, well, Pa- the Pakistan has got drones there. And, you know, they're supporting the Taliban's. And I looked at the video and then I was like, that's a video game. Like they're using footage, like news outlets are using footage of a video game.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  Seriously?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  And also footage of like hell, US military in Arizona. And it's been passed off as the Pakistan is in Pangia. And I just remember thinking, what the, it was this complete disinformation circle. And when I really started to dig into it, I found that it was a lot of the disinformation was coming from India. So basically Pangia had become this proxy for the conflict between Pakistan and India. And they were sending different information, a lot of which was completely inaccurate. So I said to my fixer, and we need to do whatever it takes to get into Pangia. Cause I need to know, has it fallen, hasn't it fallen, what is going on there?

• 55:27Speaker 01

  And so he was able to make that arrangement and we were sort of the first journalists that were able to get in and and go through all eight districts. And that was about, that was on, I wanna say it was about September nine, I think. I did, we went to Pangia.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  And did you drive up there?

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we drove. So it's, it's not far from Kabul, it's about an hour and a half. And then we, we get there and it was very heavily fortified by the Taliban and, and we get in and immediately it was very clear to me the Taliban had complete control of it. Even, even, yeah, there was just so much mis- misinformation.

• 56:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you talk to any N R F fighters?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. And most, I was watching them surrender from the mountains and, and they were coming down and handing their guns over to the Taliban's and the Taliban's were giving them the ladder. And off they were going and they were leaving and honestly, and, and I got so much heat for this, but it, you know, you can only re- report what you see in here. There really wasn't a fight. It wasn't a big fight. A lot of that was exaggerated. There was not a single amount of damage that I saw anywhere in that main street. Not to say there wasn't fighting in the mountains.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  But I, I didn't, I heard one rocket launched that entire day that I was there. The leadership had fled, they'd already left.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  And I just think that was just sort of, and I still hear it now about, you know, people going around trying to get weapons, trying to, you know, it's not there. It doesn't exist the way it existed thirty years ago. And again, goes back to so many of them that I knew, they're not in the country anymore. But, you know, and it was crazy. I got so much heat for simply reporting. There really wasn't a fight here. And the diaspora just came after me and people, you know, I just, I'd never experienced that kind of backlash just from reporting a story. So I was, I was kind of relieved when, you know, some friends of mine from Wall Street Journal and New York Times and things, they went in a couple of weeks later and reported the same thing. So I was like, well, okay, I'm not crazy. Um, yeah.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, uh, the, the, when you talk about the, the folks that you knew that went to France, like, give us a little bit of background on that.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Well, it was just in that initial evacuation period, just a lot of the young fighters that I knew that they, France was, France was very close with, with the Pangiris and, and Amarcha Masood, his wife lives there, and he spent a lot of time there during his time. And so they have a very close relationship and the French is very aligned with the Pangiris. So they were mostly able, a lot of the men were able to get, I guess, SIVs to go to France in that evacuation period. And a lot of them took it and off they went. And so, yeah, I don't doubt there was certainly a fight there, but I just think it was really blown out of proportion in terms of any ability to, to take it. And it was very clear the Taliban had full control of every single of those districts.

• 58:19Jocko Willink?

  So you spend, what, how long were you up there, for a day?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:23Jocko Willink?

  So you spend a day up there and now, at this point now, the Taliban is forming their government?

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:30Jocko Willink?

  And, um, yeah, they, they now run the country. They formed their government September 11th. They kind of formally announced that they're in control and this is the new, this is the new regime.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. They reopened the, the ministry, um, you know, for the prevention of vice and propagation of virtue, which is, uh, something that existed in their first reign, where they would go around with these morality police and, and school people and people would get flogged if your beard wasn't long enough or if a woman's, you know, wasn't wearing the correct burka. Um. So they were very stringent about that. They haven't restarted the morality police. But at the beginning, it was a little bit terrifying. And I I went to the opening of um the ministry and and we sort of just. It was very bizarre. That very first month, you could just walk up and knock on a door anywhere and get in. Um. They tightened down since then, but it was suddenly you just had all this access to things. And because the Taliban's were not used to

• 59:26Speaker 01

  all this media and people, and it was very bizarre for them. So they were just sort of, sure, come in.

• 59:32Jocko Willink?

  What's your, what's your opening line when you walk up to the Ministry of Prevention of Vice and Propagation of Virtue? What do you say when you knock on their door?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  We just come, I go with my fixer, my photographer. And of course, they don't look at me. Um. They, you know, that was the other bizarre thing, too. I, the psychological effect of being ignored and um invisible for a month straight is actually just, it made me a little bit crazy. So but I would make a deliberate at at first, for the first few weeks, I was being trying to be polite. I would stand back and just let them go up and, you know, handle it and and do their in passing greetings with the Taliban's and make, ask the questions. And I would just be in the background. They would interview with me. They didn't like it. They would complain and say, why did you bring a woman? You know, should I should be interviewing with a man? But they would usually, and my fixer would say, well, she'll go, she'll go and write about it.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  She'll go and write about the fact that you aren't going to interview her. So then they were very worried about perception at that point. Um. But so we we'd go up and they were doing this, you know, big opening for their, you know, all the guys went in and I couldn't go in. So my photographer and fixer went in. I was allowed to go into the compound. And um, some of the Taliban's bought me a chair and I'm sitting under the tree.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  And they're all, you know, doing their, the Hakani's and everybody's in the building next to me doing their their sermons. And then and then finally they said, oh, we need to put her in a room. She can't sit here. So I get moved to a room and they're bringing me tea and fruit and it was all just very bizarre. And then finally, when the celebrations had finished and they're all doing picnics outside, um, the director came to to interview me in the in the little room and he would just sort of sit there and um, very softly spoken and would answer my questions, but looking at the ground. So I was, yeah, I was very invisible, um, which at first I took, I said, you know, I'll be, you know. I I went with the approach that they're not used, they've never seen a woman before, especially not a woman working out with men.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  They, if lucky, they've seen their mother's daughter, if they have one, and their sister. They really have not seen a woman before. So I tried to be like, well, this is very new to them.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Are you wearing a burka or no?

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  No, no, I refused. I wore everything that I normally wore in Afghanistan previously, just a hijab. And sometimes I wore a mask, depending, but I refused to wear a burka, I refused to wear an aquib, I refused to wear anything other than a hijab. Because that's all it says in Islam is cover the head and that's it. So that's what I went with. So I thought, you know, this is a very big learning experience for them too. And even when I would go to villages, it was so bizarre, you could hear the villagers in the background, is she a man or a woman? Like, they'd just never seen, it was just so new to them. And so at the beginning, I was respectful and then I I snapped, I I I don't, I just, when you're ignored completely for that long, I just thought, I'm not okay with this anymore.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Um, and so I made a very big point of any time we went to meet with the Taliban's that I was with my photographer and fixer, I would walk up and I would just stare at them. I'd say hi and I would stare at them. And they looked the other way and even in interview when they would speak and they would just look at my fixer and not to me, I would continue to stare at them. And ninety-five percent of the time they broke, ninety-five percent of the time, eventually they started to look at me. And throughout the course of my months there, I found that by the end, that most of them were actually looking at me and I thought, I don't want to go and perpetuate this idea of it's okay just to ignore a woman, even though to a lot of them that is respect. They think it's respectful

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  to not look at me or ignore me. And I thought, if you are going to run this country, you need to learn what that is going to entail and that is going to be that women are working in the street. That's how it is. Foreign women will come in and work. Um, so it was just an interesting social experiment, but I could, yeah. Staring at them.

• 1:03:31Jocko Willink?

  So there was like a line, cause you know, early, early you said, you know, that when the Taliban would, they would look at you and you were like, oh, when the cars, they would just wave us through checkpoints because it's a sign of respect. But then when you're actually trying to communicate with them and they're just not even looking at you, were there, were they afraid?

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just what they're taught. They're taught to never look at a woman. They did, it's just, it's indoctrination. That it's disrespectful to, to look at it, at a woman that's not your, your own wife or your mother. That's the way that they're, they're taught. So, um. I understand that, but they're also gonna have to learn. That's, that's not always gonna be the way.

• 1:04:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you said, hey, it's not gonna, this is the way it's gonna have to be in the future. But do you think it'll be that way? Or do you think they'll just not allow it?

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I saw a big shift over that few months of, again, I tried to take the approach of as much as this is new for me, this is new for them too. Like they've never been in a media spotlight the way they are now. They've never had all this social media and attention and, and so they're navigating something new as well. And so I think that, I think that I, I hope that they've learned. I, I did see a change in, in it over that period, just in, in their interaction.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, I know you actually, I talked about that drone, drone strike earlier.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  And I know that at one point you actually.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Twice I went and met with the family at the house where it was hit. Yeah.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  Talk us through that.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was devastating. So, yeah, on, on the edge of Kabul, very small, you know, sort of impoverished area. Um, we went to see that family on that first day that basically that the Pentagon had acknowledged that, okay, it was a mistake. And it was heartbreaking. It was absolutely heartbreaking. And one of the, the, you know, it was three brothers that were all sort of living there with all their family and waiting to get that call to go to the airport to evacuate. And one of the, the men had lost all his kids. All his three kids were killed and another one, two of them, just it, it was heartbreaking. The car was all still there and.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  I just, I can't imagine that the guy had gone to work that day. He was working for an NGO. And they sort of had a ritual where the little kids would run up to the car when it came in. And he would, you know, then they jump in the car and they drive into the, into the house. And so he came back in five o'clock that afternoon and that's when the drone hit. And the kids had all sort of ran out to get the car and jumped in. And that's when they were hit with the drone. Um, and it was just, it was devastating, you know, the, the mothers who just, who could not speak. And I went back to follow up uh with them. Um, a couple of, I guess it would have been in November, so late November, so recently.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  And I, I, you know, I said, has, has anybody, cause there were reports that you've been compensated. The, the US was going to give them compensation and also speed up their visas to come. Because some of them did qualify for SIVs and had applied for them before the evacuation. So before any of this had happened. And they said, you know, we, we haven't heard a thing. We have, nobody's apologized, nobody's contacted us. And in, in the US kind of saying, oh, we're going to give these people comp- pump compensation. It endangered them further because then people around thought, well, these people have money now. And, and you know, and, and crime in Afghanistan is terrible as it is. And so suddenly these people were under an extra layer of threat on top of it. So I don't know what sort of happened, if anything's transpired over the last couple of weeks.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  I tried to put them in touch with a, a rescue organization that was going to help them get out and speed up. And they said, oh, you know, we're supposedly in contact with some lawyers in DC. But I don't know that anything ever came out of that either, or, you know, if they were able to get out. But it was really just heartbreaking and in many levels. And, and what's fascinating is that they weren't bitter people. They were not, they were not angry at the US. They were not, um, you know, they didn't want to try to get, and they want to come to the US. You know, they still wanted to come and live here and, and get out of Afghanistan. But yeah, I, I just hope that, that, that case isn't lost.

• 1:07:49Jocko Willink?

  Is there any news or information about the sort of intel thread that led to that drone strike?

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  I mean, only from what I've read out of reports was just, it seemed like a, I guess, a perfect storm of fire, really. It just seemed that, and again, I'm still trying to understand. It was like you were targeting a Toyota Corolla. Well, seventy percent of the cars in Kabul are Toyota Corollas. So I just think it seemed like a perfect storm from many different levels. And I think the US was in panic mode at that point. Having had the airport attack a couple of days earlier and was so terrified that this guy who was pulling water out of his car. Was pulling explosives out of the car and.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it all just seemed to come together without, I guess, the correct due diligence.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  I I've done targets before, hit targets that were just, they were just wrong. And and that was a huge lesson learned for me. I hit a target one time, my first deployment to Iraq and. And pulled the thread on the, because I got back thinking that was not right, like that that person, the guy that we got is not a bad guy. He clearly was not a bad guy. And it came back and started pulling the thread. Hey, who who did this? Who gave us this information? And eventually pulled the thread and it was um like he had, his wife had fired the maid. Or something like that. It was something like that. The maid was pissed.

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  And so she went and started telling Americans that, oh, yeah, this guy, he's a bad guy. He's financing. You know, that kind of thing. Um. And so that was a huge lesson for me because from then on, my my question would be, who put this X on this building? Because that's what we would literally get would be a a map and there'd be an X on the building, a red X, just like a movie, a red X on a building. And I would say, who put that red X there? I want to know who put that red X in. And I would pull the thread and find out exactly, hey, this is the information that we've got. This is what's corroborated. It's really, really hard. And if you're not in that mode and there's pressure,

• 1:10:02Jocko Willink?

  that's where these people make these um quick calls to to try and do something and you know, again, I don't I'll I want to pull the thread on that more and hopefully I can try and as it becomes declassified because I'm sure some of it's classified where they're getting information from all that stuff can be classified. But it'll be interesting to pull the thread on that and see why they pulled the trigger on on that mission.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  And the report came back saying, nobody was responsible, nobody was held accountable. It was just a mistake that that they couldn't sort of pinned to one person was the Pentagon report on it. I thought, how is that? How is that possible? And how is nobody held accountable to this at all?

• 1:10:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, even for me, when we hit that target and cap caught this guy, thank God, we didn't shoot him. Thank God, he didn't resist. He didn't resist because he wasn't a bad guy. So we went, we grabbed this guy, but the reason I wanted was so engaged with that was because I knew it was me. Hey, I'm the one that's kicking in the door and we're, you know, well, my team is doing that. So I need to take ownership of what we're doing and make sure that this is the right thing to do in the right situation. Because, yeah, I mean, so if there if you're allowed to sort of push responsibility on to 14 different people that all had a hand in the intel gathering, which a bunch of people do gather that intel.

• 1:11:26Jocko Willink?

  But who's pulling the trigger? Who's saying, yes, go? And you need to own that. If you make that mistake and explain why, and then you can put some procedures in place that won't let it happen again.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  And also, you have to question a little bit. You have the inspector general of the Air Force investigating the Air Force like, you know, would it be better to have an independent person looking at this as opposed to having somebody investigate themselves? I don't know. I didn't. It's just sort of a question that I've asked myself.

• 1:11:56Jocko Willink?

  And there's another thing that can happen as well. And this was a term that I first heard when I was in Iraq, my second deployment. Good shot, bad result. Meaning, when you lay out what happened, what a individual saw, like if the person that pulled the trigger, what he saw, what he understood, what he was thinking, you lay all those things out, and you say, you know what? That was a good shot. I understand why you took that shot. I'm sorry that this is what happened, but we at least, we at least investigate and say, okay, how did this happen? How did this occur? And how do we make sure that, first of all, the person wasn't being negligent?

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  The person's not trying to hide anything? Because, look, when you're in war, you're gonna shoot people. And occasionally, you're gonna shoot someone that didn't deserve to get shot. That happens. And when that happens, you have to actually look at it and say, okay, how did it happen? How did you make that decision? Why did you make that decision? What did you see? You pull all that stuff apart. And with my guys, the couple of times that something like this happened, it was, hey, I understand why you took that shot. And, and it was actually the right call, and I'm, it's horrible that has a bad result, but I understand why you did it, and it made sense.

• 1:13:21Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's a lot different than, oh, wait a second, you didn't see anything that looked suspicious, or you, you know, why did you shoot this? Well, I don't know. No, never got that answer, and never was in those situations. So, for, to your point, for, to pull the thread on the whole thing, if someone said, hey, this is what we saw, this is the vehicle that we were targeting, this is the intel hit that we got, this is what our informant said, this is what our electronic surveillance said, they could actually paint a picture where you say, you know, in that pressure situation, I understand what you did, I understand why you took that shot, and you took the risk at taking that shot so you could save Americans and save an attack. I understand that. Okay, now we, we at least learned something.

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  But to just say, mm, nothing, it doesn't make sense. It's not, it's not the right move, man. Freaking horrible.

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  You also, I mean, you were like on the freaking Taliban tourist trip. I mean, you, you went to uh, visit Mullah Omar's like remote mosque out there.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  So that was fascinating. So we took this, you know, again, taking advantage of the fact suddenly, we went to, I went to almost all the provinces because this was something that I couldn't ever do before by road. Suddenly we could, we could travel and this was fascinating to me. So we took this epic kind of journey from Kabul to Kandahar. And you know, through Logar and then Wardak and then through um, Ghazni. Actually, it was very bizarre in Ghazni after we stayed at the filthiest hotel that I think I've ever stayed at in my life. There was, the sheets weren't like, it was, it was gross. And mind you, this was still September where it was very hot.

• 1:15:05Jocko Willink?

  Gotta give them a bad Yelp review for sure.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  It was, I just, I didn't have a sleep. The toilet didn't work. Like there was just one shared squat toilet that didn't work. And the shower didn't work and it was overflowing. And I just like, just could not wait to leave that place. But anyhow, what's so bizarre to me.

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  I like the fact that you're jumping into random cars with Taliban elders. But you don't get mad until you got a freaking stuffed up shower.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  But you know, it was so bizarre. So we're sitting there and we're in this little like place having dinner downstairs. And again, it's very unusual for a woman to be out at night. And I was like, oh, you know, F it, I'm going out. So I'm having dinner with you. It was my driver, my fixer and um, my photographer. And then a bunch of Kandahari Taliban's come into the restaurant and sort of sitting there and, and staring and doing their, you know, asking a few questions and went about their business. But anyway, I found out the next day, which was very strange, the hotel, the, and because I have to stay separately to the men. So the guys all shared one room. And then as a woman, I have to have my own room. So I was on the other side. And then these Kandahari Taliban's, so bizarre, they stayed, they were traveling through,

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  but they stayed that night because they heard there were foreigners there. And literally like stayed outside. My room that night to make sure nobody came in, which was just bizarre. In a way, it was kind of goes back to their past June Wali hospitality, wanting to make sure nothing happened to the foreigners. Um, which, yeah, we can, we can talk about that because that's, that leads to so many different things. But that sort of shows you this very bizarre dichotomy of what, what is happening in this country. Because on one hand, you're sort of seeing acts like that. And then on the other hand, you see the brutality and you see this insurgency that's trying to be a government. So, yeah, very bizarre. But anyway, we continued to go through to Kandahar, which is the birthplace of the Taliban's.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Um, on all the roads they bombed up, you know, I'd ask them, who bombed this road? Oh, we did. Well, now you've got to fix it, right? Like now it's time because you, the roads are terrible. So, you know, we eventually got there and then it's about two hours um from Kandahar city to go to this little tiny, it's in, in Sangizat, which is where Mullah Omar started the Taliban in nineteen ninety four. So we drive there and, and get to this, it's this extremely primitive place. It's just mud huts, it's, it's dirt roads, it's a- and somewhere I really think that the US just never was because it was just, it was Taliban territory forever.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  So we get there and just this one tiny square room um in the middle of, in the middle of nowhere. And go in and, and the Imam and these village elders we- welcome us in. And it was actually strange again because that was the first time that, and it was at Mullah Omar's mosque that the, the Mullahs were actually looking at me and talking to me. And I thought, this is just strange because I've come from all these other places and he should, should be the most conservative of all. And yet you're actually engaging and asking, asking me about my personal life, you know? So I just thought this is bizarre. Um, but you know, their, their sort of philosophy on it was that

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  that Mullah Omar gained traction and, and gained supporters because this came after the, the, there was a civil war going on. So after the Russians were, were kicked out of Afghanistan.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  You know, quickly, things became another war again, which was the civil war in Afghanistan. And Mullah Omar presented this idea of there was going to be no corruption and the crime was going to stop. And he would give food and money and things to the poor. And and people gravitated to that. And you could see just from sort of the simplicity of this tiny little mosque that, you know, looked like the carpets weren't replaced in thirty, forty years, that that was really something I think that he did live by, was this um sort of sense of humility. And I think a lot of Afghans at that point, when they were starting to see corruption among all these warlords, they gravitated to that. And that's how he was able to to build a very strong following very quickly.

• 1:19:09Jocko Willink?

  Um, you mentioned to me about seeing people addicted to drugs there.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  What what's that culture like? Because it's the mecca for opium, right?

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I think it's something more than ninety percent of the world's heroin and opium come from Afghanistan. So a- and the Taliban's really pro- that that has been one of the number one ways they were able to make money through the insurgency, was through the the selling of of those drugs. And they, a lot in Helmand, we went up to Helmand to uh Sangin and and places like that where they grow the poppies. And it's funny, because I went, the the Taliban were putting on this big, you know, display of we're getting rid of the drugs. It's haram, we're going to kill the the crops and blah, blah, blah. And um and I was at the Canton Narcotics and and and the guys, you know, they they're putting on this display. But then it became very evident to me, especially when I went there, and the Taliban themselves are harvesting it.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  And I said, well, so you tell me it's haram. And then one of them says to me, it's only haram if we sell it to Afghans. If we sell it over the border, it's not haram. So basically, they said, we can sell it to other, we can kill other people in other places, but we don't want to kill um, we don't want to kill Afghans. So that was sort of their philosophy. I don't see them ending that anytime soon. They're going to try to, I think, probably find avenues to legalize it in the sense of. Countries that perhaps are friendly to them that need opium for for medicine. I think that's the approach that they seem like they're gonna wanna take is is to try to legalize it in some way.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Now, they were using the jails to they were rounding up a lot of the addicts from the streets and and there's a lot of addicts in the streets. And rounding them up and and putting them in jail because they didn't have proper rehab. So that was sort of the approach that the Taliban's have been taking.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  And kids too, there were a lot of sadly, a lot of young kids.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  Is the cult, is there like a drug culture of some kind? Or is it just something that sort of seeps into, hey, this is what we grow, you start trying it, you start eating it or whatever?

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  You know, with the, there was like one little boy that I talked to who was thirteen and he was addicted and he was in this jail. And I said, well, how did you start taking this? And he said several years ago, he'd have to go and buy it for his dad. So he'd go and buy, get the, get the, you know, puppies and heroin for his dad. And then eventually he just, you know, tried it once and and and he became addicted. So I think it tends to to filter through families and really impoverished families usually. Um, so, yeah, just.

• 1:21:41Jocko Willink?

  No. You eventually do get like detained and kind of accused of being a spy, right? What happened with that?

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  So that was also in Kandahar. So what happens is as a journalist, so just to to go back a little bit. So when you get to the country, as a journalist, you have to go to the the Ministry of Information and Culture, which is sort of like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And they check your credentials and give you a mujahid, Zabbiola Mujahid, who's the spokesperson, basically gives you a signed letter that says you're accredited journalist to be able to work and and you flash that letter. So when I am going through a checkpoint or when I'm going to try to do an interview, I flash my Zabbiola letter and they say, okay, she's pressed, she can come in or whatever the situation is. So. And when you go to a province, you have to, the protocol is you're supposed to go and inform

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  the Minister of Information and Culture that you were there so that they know that you can get through checkpoints and you're not gonna get arrested. So in Kandahar, that's exactly what we did. We went to the Ministry of Information and Culture and did an interview with him about blah, blah, blah. And he said, okay, you can go anywhere you want. Goodbye sort of thing. So we're like, okay, well, we're going to Spemboldek, which is the border of Pakistan in Kandahar that um sort of leads into uh into that tribal area. So into Quetta. So we go down to Spemboldek and there's just people everywhere trying, because the border is mostly closed and there's people everywhere. And instantly, I just get mobbed, like absolutely. I'm talking just, just

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  flooded by hundreds of of people that just surround me and I'm, you know, with my fixer, I'm like, don't, don't leave me because these people are gonna mob me. So I'm trying to intervene, just you just get mobbed. It was, it was crazy and and.

• 1:23:26Jocko Willink?

  Is this because you're Western?

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess they saw, they saw a camera and then they saw a female and they thought, okay, Jonas, everybody sort of, they're curious, they wanna tell their story. But what was bizarre, Jaco, is the Taliban's were flogging them, like whipping these guys to get them away from me. And I was like, please stop that. Like, I don't wanna be responsible.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  They just continued just to follow. I was like, you're just getting whipped. And I was upset about it because I didn't want people getting hurt. I don't know, it's just, why, why are you not leaving when this is happening? It was bizarre. And so what ended up happening was it just, it got to the point where it was so much, there were just, just people everywhere and just.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  What was the, uh, this town was like what? Who, what, what kind of town was this? Was it like a super remote town?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Border town. So it was just a border crossing. So it was a small bit, bit, just so many people.

• 1:24:18Jocko Willink?

  But they were just freaking hyped to see you.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Just, just, just, it was the craziest thing. And I, I mean, you have that a little bit, but this was a whole other level where I just thought, oh, my goodness, like, what is happening? Um, anyway, I couldn't go anywhere and I would try to grab people to interview them into a store and I'd look out the window and suddenly the store was just surrounded. It was so crazy. And I said, I just, I didn't, I, and the, and so the Taliban's were coming along, asking questions, what is happening? And we tried to call the driver and we had this funny driver called Shafiq and he um. He always likes to eat and every time he goes, he tries to find eat and suddenly Shafiq's not in the place that he we left him. Shafiq had gone off to get food.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  At the.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the car wasn't there and and and and the weed, my fixer is calling Shafiq. And being like, where are you, where are you? He's not answering his phone. And so the Taliban's come along in their police vehicle and we're just trying to call Shafiq and I'm telling them like, we're leaving, we're leaving. Um, we're just getting our driver. We couldn't contact the driver. And so next thing you know, Taliban's like, all right, get in. And I said, I don't want to get in your car. I don't want to go to the police station. And they said, no, get in. And so we get into the police vehicle, we go to the police station and they put us in their detention room. And we're sitting there for a while and I'm thinking this is going to get resolved really quickly, hours and hours. And then finally, just more of them are piling in and the top intel guy is piling in and all these Taliban's are piling in.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  And I'm showing them my credentials. I'm showing them the letter. I'm showing them the passport. I'm showing them my press card and they said, oh, this is fake. I said, no, it's not. They said, yes, it is. And they, you know, accusing us of basically spying and. I just, I don't, I don't know what else to tell you. I'm a journalist. I've showed you my credentials. I've showed you my passport. You have all my information. So I I don't know what to tell you. So we're sort of sitting there. More people are coming in, hammering us. I can see my fixer is starting to get worried and he's a very sort of cool, calm. Doesn't really, things don't rattle him too much, but I can see he's starting to to get worried and and doesn't know what to do.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Um, and they're telling, you know, about these Pakistani spies that they arrested a couple of nights earlier and and. Long story short, eventually, many hours later, they were able to get in contact with the the Zabiyullah's office, who was able to verify our information and. And then they were extremely apologetic and they said, well, we'll take you to the border and and you can, you know, photograph the Pakistanis. And at that point, they were fighting with the Pakistanis. So, um, yeah, I guess that was so. So we ended up going to the border and and getting, you know, some good interviews and and footage in. They were very, very apologetic about the situation, but. That was just one of those those situations where that that usually is the case for journalists is that especially working in the Middle East or in Asia like Afghanistan.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  They will accuse you of being spies and you have little recourse to argue and say, well, I've showed you my credentials. I'm not, but I don't know what I need to do to convince you anymore.

• 1:27:22Jocko Willink?

  You've got like a survivor's bias, but you just leave, make it through everything. It's crazy. There's so many people that this, your story always seems to end up working out.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:27:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, touch on, touch wood on that one. Um, what about the Hakana? You you visited coast, kind of.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  So Host, yeah, so that was, um, that's sort of where the Hakane is. A lot of them come from that in Pakhtiya. And, uh, yeah, so that was interesting. So I have a good friend of mine who's from Host and so we went down there. And, you know, it was, it was an interesting place because it, you know, again, it's that sort of the home of the Hakane's, but it was very untouched. A lot of the time by actual conflict. It was one of the few places where you had roads that were decent and that. Um, it was a very self-sufficient kind of place, but, but yeah, what struck me going in is this big billboard of Bo Bergdahl. That's just there as you enter, as you enter the city. And it's Bo Bergdahl and another mullah.

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  Like a salute to Bo Bergdahl.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's not. It's him looking down and like he sort of got blood on his face and he's looking like he's detained and miserable. And then there's this mullah standing in the picture next to him. And it's a poem in Pashto that doesn't really make a lot of sense, but it's basically a tribute to this mullah and I'm still very unclear.

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  I thought you were saying it was a tribute tribute to Bo Bergdahl.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  It's almost sort of like, uh, a, it's a tribute to the mullah, but for some reason they felt the need to put the Bo Bergdahl there. It's this new, new billboard. And then I found out that the, the Host, the governor of Host is actually one of the Gitmo five. So I guess he put it up there to, you know, celebrate himself in some way. And, and he actually invited us to, to go and do an interview, which I didn't end up going because he didn't want. I went and met with the mayor, but I didn't go and meet with him because my, he didn't want my friend, the friend that had, the hosty friend who had taken me to Host. He didn't want her to go, so I, I felt sort of obliged to.

• 1:29:22Jocko Willink?

  I mean, just, just explain that Taliban five point in case anyone doesn't know what that means.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  So I guess when, when Bo Bergdahl was traded, um, he was what cap- captured in. Two thousand and nine, he ran off base, I think.

• 1:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Something.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  He deserted his base in uh in in the neighboring Pakzir, which is next to Host. And he was captured by the Taliban and ultimately the Haqqanis took him. And he was, I guess, yeah, under captivity for a long time. And then eventually, under the Obama administration, I think it was in twenty fifteen. They orchestrated a deal to release five Gitmo detainees. Uh in exchange for for the one US uh US soldier, so.

• 1:30:01Jocko Willink?

  And now now that one of those guys is uh what the mayor, what is he?

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  He's the governor.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  The governor.

• 1:30:06Speaker 01

  The governor of Host now. Yeah, they're all in top leadership positions. They're all running the show, you know, and the Haqqanis themselves. I mean, Siraj is wanted by the US for five million dollars. He's now the Minister of Interior and his uncle Khalil is the Minister of Refugees. Which um yeah, I don't know. I don't know what that entails.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy. So how about the? Let's talk a little bit about this. So you know, you mentioned Haqqani, you got Taliban. Haqqani and Taliban are very aligned, right?

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  In fact, they they kind of say there's no difference between the two, even though there's.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  Well, the the Haqqanis are actually a designated terrorist organization, but the Taliban isn't.

• 1:30:49Jocko Willink?

  But I'm saying in Afghanistan.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  They're very close. Well, now it's basically intertwined. I think before it was. There were slight sort of ideological differences and in in many ways, the Haqqanis were, they were the leading.

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  They were like the hardcore.

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were the hardcore. Most of the suicide bombings were orchestrated by them. They were the ones kidnapping who still have Americans in ca- ca- captivity. But um.

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  And I mean.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  And very close with Al Qaeda.

• 1:31:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, the founder of the Haqqanis, Haqqani himself.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  This was a guy that was, you know, funded by the CIA to fight the Soviet Union. Reagan called him personally a freedom fighter.

• 1:31:25Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It's bizarre.

• 1:31:27Jocko Willink?

  So when we talk about things being bizarre right now, they've been bizarre for a long time. They've been very bizarre for a long. We we paid. Him millions of dollars, um the the founder of the Haqqani and. I think it's, I mean, it's a fascinating guy, you know, I mean, he was, um, he's got two wives, got seven sons. I think three or four of his sons were killed in combat.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he, he's the really of the one who brought a lot of the Arabs into the fold. So until that point, it was very, you know, Afghan, Pakistan. He started getting a lot of the Arab funding, which brought in the Bin Ladens and a lot of that kind of funding. But, um, but what, what I found to be really interesting in, in really researching the Akhans is they're very educated and they're, they get a lot of education, a lot of their, their wives go to the Middle East, go to Saudi Arabia and get educations, which is ironic, given that so many of the women under the Taliban are deprived of education. So it's sort of this dichotomy, but, but everyone I know who's worked closely or knows the Khans well will always say they're 20 steps ahead of everyone else. Like they are the brainchild really of the Taliban. So they know

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  what is going on down to a T. And Siraj does not get photo, there is not a photograph of Siraj that you can possibly find. A grainy photograph the FBI has, but it's very old and very unclear. He does not get photographed at all. And he did an event once when I was there, which was, um, celebrating suicide bombers at the Intercontinental Hotel, which of course the Akhans, you know, sent suicide bombers to several years earlier. The whole thing is crazy.

• 1:33:05Jocko Willink?

  So when did you go to this thing? Was this on this?

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  I didn't go in, but this was in, this was in late October. They had, they were giving land and compensation money to families of suicide bombers, which we can get into because they are very much continuing their suicide bombing despite being a government. But they, um, so he's doing this big event there, but in every photograph that was taken, it's him from the back or him from the side or his face is blurred. And I said to, to one of my sources there who was, who works for him, who's a Kabul intel Taliban guy. And I said, well, you know, what is up with that? And he says, Siraj will walk around the street every few days. And nobody knows who he is. So he will walk around the street to check, you know, what's happening at the checkpoints, check what the Taliban's are doing, um, and nobody knows who he is. And he's going to keep it that way.

• 1:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Undercover boss.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  But, but there, yeah, there, it, the whole thing is just crazy. And then You have, so he's Minister Interior and then you have Mullah Omar San, Mullah Yakub, who's only about twenty nine, thirty. He is the Minister of Defence. And those two are bat heads. They don't like each other. They're coming from different schools of thought. So it's just,

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  it's a crazy world.

• 1:34:15Jocko Willink?

  And then outside of those two groups, you have ISIS-K.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So they, you know, they've had a presence in Afghanistan since about twenty fifteen. But essentially were pretty much defeated around twenty, I think the Afghan government in early twenty nineteen basically said that they were defeated. And that was the whole idea of the US's mission up until, I guess, Trump authorized them to go after the Taliban's. But up until then, it was Al Qaeda and then ISIS. And they've really made a terrifying resurgence. There's almost daily attacks happening across Afghanistan as I was there.

• 1:34:52Jocko Willink?

  And, and they are like even more hardcore than the Haqqani. Is that an accurate statement?

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  They're, they've got a different ideology. So what makes the Taliban's and, and the Haqqani's different to ISIS and to Al Qaeda is they're very, Taliban's are very much focused on Afghanistan. They don't have any grandiose desires. They, they say, we want to make sure that no foreigners come into our country. We want good relations with everybody, but we don't want another foreigner to come into our country.

• 1:35:22Jocko Willink?

  They're like isolationists.

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  Yes, they're very focused on Afghanistan. Whereas groups like ISIS and, and Al Qaeda have a much more global ideology where they, they want to see, as the fighter said, they want to see their interpretation spread throughout the world and, and they're the ones that will plant attacks in, in other countries. So therefore are viewed as a, as a national security threat, whereas the Taliban isn't. And that's really hard for the Afghans to, it's always been hard for the Afghans to really wrap their head around because the Taliban's were doing so many suicide bombings and attacks and, and to them, they're absolutely terrorists and they couldn't. It was hard for me to explain to them why the US was sort of leaving the Taliban's alone

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  and going after these much smaller groups that were at that point not even doing that many attacks. And that is, is going back to, well, the Taliban's is not a threat to the United States necessarily in it, in and of itself.

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  Did you, you went to the area where the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddha statues?

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, to Bamyan, Bamyan, beautiful province, beautiful province.

• 1:36:31Jocko Willink?

  Fifteen hundred years old, those statues were.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and that was, that was crazy. So what, and I, I talked to the Taliban's about this, about, you know, was that a mistake? And so they say, no, no, no, that, that wasn't a mistake. That was the decision then, but now we're going to protect everything. And so I went to a few other places with ruins and the Taliban's are all protecting it. And I said, well, you're going to continue to protect these Buddhas or, you know, and Mazinak and other places? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's our orders for now. But what we have to remember is this might be their orders for now, but they didn't blow up those Buddhas until early two thousand and one. So at that point, the Taliban's had already been in control, what, since nineteen ninety six? So it was left alone. And then Mullah Omar did it as an extortion because he wanted the international community to give the Taliban's money.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  And the international community wouldn't. So then he threatened, well, I'm going to blow up the Buddhas. And still didn't get the money. So he made good on his promise. So that's the thing with the Taliban's, right now, they might be okay where everything's okay, but you don't know what they're going to do next month. You don't know how the orders will change. And so, and you get there and it was bizarre because the Taliban's are taking selfies in front of these blown up Buddhas. And I said, well, you do know that, that it's you guys who blew these up, right? It just, you know, incredibly strange, but Bamyan is a beautiful province. It just, it shows you, I think when we think of Afghanistan, we just think of the war and the bloodshed. But it just is, is one of the most remarkably aesthetically beautiful places in the world.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  And Bamyan is just a prime example of that. It was the first national park in Afghanistan.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, there was a, the drone strike that killed the facilitator and planner, and you did a little, a little investigation on that as well, right?

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I went there a few times. So that was just outside Jalalabad in Nanghanha. So, Nanghanha's always been the hub for ISIS-K. It's on the Pakistan border on the east, and it's just, that is where, you know, Tora Bora is, where Bin Laden went and hid immediately. I also went out to the, the MOAB side, if you remember, when the US dropped that massive mother of all bombs in beginning of 2017. That's also in Nanghanha. So, um, so there's an area, a couple of different areas, but, but that particular area was a district called Sakarad, and that was just outside of Jalalabad. And it's one of those very eerie places, and you go there and you feel like the skin on your neck is standing

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  up because it just doesn't feel right. And so the house that was hit was in the far corner. It was actually a really nice house compared to, you know, a lot of the mud huts and things. And this was a nice sort of brick home. And we went into the home, um, and you could really see where it was hit, and it was, it was so precise. It was just like, you know, this one section of the backyard and this chair that had been blown up and nothing else was touched. So I went and talked to, to the neighbors there, and, and one of the, the guys who, who was there, and as the drone strike hit, which was close to midnight, and he was on, I guess, guard duty on a roof across. And, yeah, he sort of said that, that there was a strange guy that sort of hadn't been living there that long, but, um,

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  but would come and go. And, yeah, they hit that night, and then sort of immediately, I guess, a car came and took the women out of the house and the children. And then, um, the next day, a bunch of Taliban's came in and were, were taking things out, taking flags, taking, he said, he didn't know what they were taking, but big boxes that were just weighing the car down. And then Taliban's went in there after that and took out more things, or I guess, from the house. And then he said that the, those Taliban's were found without their heads, hanging on a, a tree the next, a couple of days later, with an ISIS stamped letter next to it, basically saying, anybody who removes these bodies is going to, to kind of be next. And he said eventually that-

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  Um, if someone from another district came to collect them, but they were just hanging there on that tree for for many days because people were afraid of ISIS. And he said that every night sort of you ISIS comes in, you they they come in and take control, but during the day, it's very much the Taliban doing patrol. The Taliban gets scared and disappear. And then the yeah, the ISIS fighters come in at night. And he even showed me his own warning letter he got from the Taliban's for doing a local news interview after that drone strike. And then he said that Taliban saw the interview and and were then accusing him of being the one that gave the location to the foreigners. So it's complex. And then the actual ISIS controlled center,

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  where a lot of these people come from is the next district over, which is Chapaghar. So so we went into that one day, which I don't know, was the smartest decision, but I'm here today.

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  You should play lottery.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  I should.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Because you would win a lot. Um, so I know you left, what, the first first?

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:28Jocko Willink?

  First of December?

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  So like a few days ago, a week ago?

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  Um, as you as you look back, is there anything else, any other high points from there? I mean, there's a bunch of stuff, I'm sure you you know, um, on your website, you've got a link to a bunch of the articles that you've written over there.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  And I have a Substack that I also subscribe to that. And I usually put all all the articles into that and also a little bit of extra kind of background.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  How do they get to the Substack?

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  So it's just, uh, you can get it straight from my website, or it's just, yeah, it's.

• 1:41:58Jocko Willink?

  And your your website is what, Hollie McKay?

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  H O L L I E M C K A Y dot com.

• 1:42:04Jocko Willink?

  There you go. And then you can get to the Substack.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Go into some more detail there. But as you look at what's going on, um, what's what's going on now? This is a disaster. I mean, I I know one thing that you had mentioned to me is like, and it's sort of the the. I guess the like the ground or the most granular sort of point zero for the disaster is like what happened to the military working dogs that got left behind.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, that was such a big story if everybody remembers, there was about a hundred and thirty dogs and you see these pictures of them at the airport. And so I wanted to to follow up on that and find out what what happened to those dogs because the D O D was very quickly to come out and say they weren't U S military dogs, but they were contracted dogs. So the long story short is that, you know, different contracting companies had given those dogs to a Campbell Small Animal Rescue, which is run by a woman named Charlotte. And she was tasked with getting them out, but when she got to the airport was basically told, you know, you can't get all these dogs on the plane and you can only take out what you can carry. So there was a lot of controversy. Oh, my gosh, these dogs are

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  being abandoned. But, you know, she's someone who really does amazing work in in rescuing these animals and caring for them. So I wanted to follow up and find out what happened to them. And I talked to her and she said they recovered about seventy. Um, most of them are not my half probably had been killed by the Taliban's. And then you had, so a lot of the spaniels, which are very friendly dogs, had run up to the Taliban's and and the Taliban's just not, they don't have dogs as pets. When they had the rule in the nineties, dogs were outlawed. They're considered unclean by the Taliban. You can have cats, but not dogs. So a lot of them were shot and then they sort of saw that these dogs had gotten so much attention and thought, well, this is a bit of a bargaining chip.

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  So they kept a lot of the German Shepherds because they thought that a lot of the German Shepherds must be guard dogs, even though a lot of them were not trained as guard dogs. But you see, especially at the airport and other places, the Taliban's walking around these dogs that they have no idea what they're doing with like these dogs like they don't look like, you know, so so some of them survived, some of them were left to run around the airport compound and and some of them got out. So, yeah, it was a sad situation and and we can debate for days, you know, obviously, humans have to get priority over dogs, but I think we all can agree, we we love our animals.

• 1:44:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, what about that? What about like the human from a humanitarian perspective of what's going on there now?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  It's an absolute disaster and that is that is the heartbreaking thing is the. To give you some context, when I got there, it was seventy Afghans to one US dollar. It was a hu- it hit a hundred by the time I left. So that just shows you how quickly that devalued, their Afghani devalued, their currency. People can't afford bread, people can't afford just basic things. There is no middle class in Afghanistan anymore. It's people are selling their belongings on the street. You know, crime has gone through the roof again. It dropped initially because I think people were in fear that they were gonna get their hand chopped off. And when it became prevalent, that wasn't going to happen, at least not right now.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  The crime went back up and it's, you go to these public hospitals and, I mean, there were just, the amount of malnourished babies that are just dying en masse and the mothers are on the floor breastfeeding and it was something I'd really just never seen to that degree. And it broke my heart because of the amount of money that we as Americans and the amount of treasure and the amount of people and the amount of, you know, effort that had been put into this. And this was a result and it's only going to get worse during the winter and the US and other countries are going to have to make this very uncomfortable decision of do we unfreeze this money, this nine point five billion that was frozen when the Taliban's took over

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund also froze? Do we unfreeze that and enable this government to support a country of thirty eight million? Because there is no money coming in, there's absolutely no money, you cannot get money out of the banks. Yeah, it was very challenging to work in because of that environment.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  But we're gonna have to make this decision of do we work with this government so that these innocent Afghan people who have already gone through so much can survive and have some kind of dignity in their lives? Or are we going to just, I guess, turn away and say, no, no, no, these people are human rights violators. We're not going to talk to them and to isolate them and. And I always look back on history and I hope that we don't make the same mistake because there was no more isolated government than the Taliban during their first reign in the nineties through to two thousand and one. They were blackballed by everybody. They had no money. The one person who came in and gave them money, and not very much, one point five million, I think it was, was Osama bin Laden. He's the one who came in and gave them money.

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  And so naturally, they were gonna protect him. Naturally, when the US said, hand him over, Mullah al-Mas said, no. He's the only one who came in and gave us money. So it's a very complex decision and there's going to be a lot of people that feel very strongly in many ways. But it's an uncomfortable decision that needs to be made on a diplomatic level of how we're gonna deal with this, because I think the Afghan people have been through enough and and they don't deserve any, eh, they don't deserve to suffer the ramifications of this any more than they already have. And that that's that's sort of the uncomfortable choice. There isn't many options.

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  Do you, as, when you got back to America, um, I guess it's been a couple of days ago, but even even as you were, you know, overseas and you were online and you were looking at the way that the stories were being presented and the way that the events were being presented with now, the, you know, the way the media and social media and emotional media all works now, what was your, you know, what was the delta between what you were seeing and what the world was being fed?

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  There was quite a dichotomy. So if I was just to look at Twitter and to look at what was happening, I would think there was mass slaughter on the street. I would think that that the Taliban's were going out and pulling people from their homes and and and certainly there are isolated cases of that happening, but that was very much the exception, not the norm. And that was not accurately reflected. I think, you know, as strange as it is, the Taliban's were trying to Show this image of of they want to be recognized.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Is it safe to say that the Taliban is trying to rebrand?

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And and I think, you know, there's a lot of this, I hear a lot of, well, they haven't changed since the two thousand and, you know, or their first reign since the nineties. And I I don't think that's accurate. They have changed. They've changed a lot in many different respects. But um, but yeah, a lot of the information I was seeing about these just, you know, mass slaughters and, you know, I think there was one thing where and a lot of people had asked me about it. There was a rumor going around about a girl that had been beheaded by the Taliban. And when I looked into it and I asked my fixer to look into it, it turned out that she had been killed in July, so before the Taliban's came in. But it was an internal family conflict. It had nothing to do with, you know, and yet this was being presented as

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  this just happened last week and and she's being beheaded. And I saw like Kim Kardashian or someone was then retweeting it and putting it on a story. And then a million more people are asking me. And I thought this is how this cycle perpetuates. But if I was to to sum up the situation, it was certainly terrible things were happening, but i- it wasn't what was being painted. You know, as I said, I I could work freely and and and unharmed. Um, and, you know, I was only wearing a hijab. So a lot of the information just was was wrong. And and there was something I even saw, you know, there was a picture that was going around where it was a woman in a burka and she had a chain around her ankle and was being led by a husband. And people were saying, you know, this is Afghanistan now under the Taliban. I looked at, you know,

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  quick reverse image search and you see, oh, no, that was two thousand and three Iraq and somebody photoshopped a chain to this woman's ankle. So there was so much of that. And um, a- and I think there really were few journalists that were in there. I didn't I didn't meet too many other Americans. I met a couple of Americans that came in and and then left again. But generally, there was just a few European journalists that came in. And so a lot of the work was being done from from outside the country. And I think it it just shows you the importance of being on the grounds. And a lot of news organizations don't want to invest in that anymore. But Afghanistan really showed me the importance of of having the ground perspective because it's it's so different to what you see just sort of aggregating or even talking to people. And I think

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  you know, a lot of interviewees were talking to the diaspora, people that had fled, but their perspective was no longer in Afghanistan. So, yeah, there's a lot of disinformation.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it'll be, no one knows, right? We don't know what the Taliban's gonna do. You know, they were pretty brutal in their last, you know, time in power from 1995, 1996, up until 2001, up until, up until the Northern Alliance and America went in there. I mean, they had some, some, some bad things happen, right? Starvation and, and just bad, some bad stuff happened. I mean, horrible. It's, it's, you know, definitely human rights violations and all that stuff. Absolutely has happened and, and, you know, there was, obviously, there were some reports of

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  terrible things happening again and it's hard to know. But to your point, unless you have people on the ground, you, it's very, it makes it even more difficult to actually know what's happening and make decisions on what you're gonna do when you're basing it on photoshopped images.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  You mentioned Osama bin Laden. What was, talk to us a little bit about Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's presence in the psyche of the Afghan people now. What did you observe from that perspective?

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I really think, you know, his legacy is still very strong in Afghanistan and even places that I went to, you know, in, again, the Jalalabad, the, the information and culture minister there has told me straight, "Don't do any stories on Osama bin Laden." So I was like, "Oh, you wait, you wait now, I'm going."

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  So, but you see that legacy is sort of carried through and, and they're all in power because of him. And again, it goes back to, he's the one who sort of came in and gave them money when no one else would. And so in return for that, they gave him, gave him safe harbor. And it's under that code of Pashtun Wali, which is really the highest moral code that the, that the Pashtuns have in protecting guests. And, and it's the same code that they use to protect somebody like me who's a, is a guest in their country. So it's, it's a very complex sort of thing. But, but when you talk to regular Afghans or, or students or, or people that, you know, and they're young. Twenty something, they they don't know who he is and it's it's just interesting because

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  you sort of look at this war and you that was continuing to go on and and and yet you sort of have the the people that are are caught in the crossfire who just sort of have no idea of what what happened and and what the background is and and why this is all kind of still going on. So it's interesting and Al Qaeda still, you know, certainly exists in Afghanistan too. Um, my understanding from the Taliban's is that they've been told that they are not allowed to do any, take any military actions, that they have to, you know, they're allowed to be in the country, but they have to to stop, you know, not plan anything or do anything, otherwise they'll be in trouble. But I think a lot of the times too, a lot of those Al Qaeda members

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  have just been basically folded in into the Taliban's and a part of the intelligence units or a part of that whole operation.

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was definitely some of your articles mentioned the fact that, you know, some twenty year old Afghan didn't really know who Osama bin Laden was.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  So sometimes when I get into discussions with people about the divisiveness in America, I'll reference the fact that I work with a bunch of different companies at my consulting company and most people that you talk to, they're not thinking about what's happening on Twitter right now. They're not thinking about this. They're they're thinking about what they're doing. They're thinking about their job. They're thinking about their company. They're thinking about moving, you know, how they're gonna grow, how they're gonna go to new markets. That's what they're thinking about. That's what they're doing. That's what their life is. Is is it similar? I mean, I guess this is a rhetorical question, but did you find the same thing? In Afghanistan, most people are like, okay, well, the Taliban's in charge or the Northern Alliance in charge. I wanna, you know, continue to get my job done

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  and raise my family and move kind of forward, like, kind of leave me alone type thing.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  You have two camps. You have the people whose entire day is is fixated on trying to get out.

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Trying to get out of Afghanistan.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Trying to get out. So there's really two camps and, you know, each even now, just every day, all day, my messages, my LinkedIn, everything is just flooded. How do I get out? How do I get out? So you have that camp and then you have another camp of people who are just basically.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  Um, I know that I can't go anywhere and this is the new reality. So how do I survive? And how do I feed my family? And, and that's really what it comes down to. It comes down to survival, especially now with the, the crisis being what it is there and the challenges of, of just day to day life.

• 1:55:56Jocko Willink?

  What are, what are people, when so many messages you, you get 10 messages about, I want to get out, I want to get out, I want to get out. Why do they want to get out? What do they, what's?

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  And it's a mixed thing. You have, you have people that are certainly have legitimate reasons to get out. Um, a lot of the commandos that I met with that are terrified because the commanders were really leading the charge in a lot of the fights. And, and they're very concerned about retaliation. Um, but then you have a lot of people who, who, a- and again, what I found, a lot of people who were maybe drivers or worked for different companies who were desperate and terrified to get out. But when I talk to them, I say, well, where's the threat? Nobody's been threatened or they're passing around a WhatsApp letter that everybody's been given that's fake. Or so in a way that the fear is contagious. And again, that's why I'm saying the fear doesn't always match the reality.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  And what I found was that people thought, well, so and so scared and my neighbor's scared and everybody's scared. So I'm going to have to be scared too, and I'm going to have to leave. So that, yeah, it was, it was contagious. And, and that's what I found that a lot of the, the worries were, were self inflicted as opposed to an actual real threat that was there.

• 1:57:06Jocko Willink?

  There's gotta be like a massive level though of like suppression, right? I mean, if you're a person that was sort of open minded and moving in this direction and now like it's over.

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  It's over.

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, and you don't get that. And especially for women too, you know, that's deeply challenging. Girls are still not able to go to, to public school. I think private schools are still open, but secondary schools have been closed for girls now for months and the Taliban's keep saying it's because we've got to make sure that they have transport that's separate to the men. And I said, well, great. We'll get you some buses. Oh, and then there's another excuse. So I'm not sure what's happening with that, but you know, women that were definitely used to going to work and to other places. And now they're at home and, and that's heartbreaking. Women, you know, I met with many women who. You know, we're doing, um, you know, in the, the national sort of taekwondo teams or in the national tennis teams.

• 1:57:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was a big article about their soccer team too.

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and now that then they're not allowed to, to, um, to do their, you know, uh, to not even practice, let alone go into any tournaments. Even I met with a top MMA guy there as well, he's, you know, great fighter. He's, I think, two fights away from UFC. And he's like, we can't fight anymore. And he said that he tried to do a fight. The Taliban's told them that they have to wear like full clothing, which he said, you know, we obviously can't do that. And the Taliban's came to their first fight and broke it up and turned into a big mess. But, you know, he's concerned because, you know, he can't get out, but, and he's trying. But, you know, he's someone who used to go to each match with, you know, the police, you know, police,

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  you know, Afghan police flag and was very pro the former security forces. And so, you know, it's tough for the guys too, even, even though they can do, you know, a little bit more than the women. But music is completely kind of outlawed and, and, and arts and all of those sorts of things.

• 1:58:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're not allowed to paint any people, not allowed to paint any living things or film any living things or photograph any living things.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they haven't been too strict about that, but yeah.

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Instruments have been outlawed, except for like some drum.

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they, they have this, their music is this neshid music, it just drives me crazy. So they would get into the car and they'd put in, you know, insist and, um, if we're driving somewhere remote and Taliban's would get in the car and they'd put in their neshids and it was just this, it's Islamic music without instruments. It's all vocals. And then there's bomb blasts and bullets and just like, and they turn it up. And I was like, it's like their motivation, it's their battlefield music. And it's like, this is crazy. And that's what they play all night. And the Taliban's actually moved next door to the house that I was living in. So I would deliberately go and get my two pack and.

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  I just blast it.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  We'll fight their music with our music.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was like, you know what? It's time to go, Holly.

• 1:59:54Jocko Willink?

  They better not come from my guitar. So here's, here's what I find. This is what's, this is what's so hard to really contemplate as a, as a human being, right? What percentage of people are, are, are, don't want it to be this way, right? What percentage of people don't want it to be this way? And would give anything to go back to whatever, to 2019? And be moving in a certain direction and have the females ready to go to school and be able to play your guitar? And be able to do MMA? What percentage of the population feels that way?

• 2:00:34Jocko Willink?

  Versus what percentage of the population wants to go back to the old Taliban ways and strict Sharia law? I'm not asking you, you can make an estimation, but it's very difficult. And then, okay, if you're that, if you're 90% is on board for Sharia law and that's what we're doing? And hey, the 10% that aren't on board with it, you, you best get out of here because this is what we're doing. Or is it 90% of the population wants to just go back to, again, 2019? Move in that direction, move towards a, a more open society? And if that's the case, and it's just a strict, small percentage of people that maintain power and control? Via force and brutality?

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, then, then, then, then what are we supposed to do?

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  So I think there's really, again, when we see with the media, what we're seeing is always generally coverage. It's coming out of Kabul or coming out of a city. And I tried to really make an effort to, to, to go to as many rural areas and provinces? Because the perspective there is completely different. So I'd say if you're going to estimate in somewhere like Kabul, you know, 80% of people want that previous life? Because they were able to, you know, there was bars, there was music that, you know, could go to clubs? You could go to, you know, get alcohol, you could do all of these things because you had that foreign footprint there. But you go to the villages and, you know, that are already very conservative? Where the women don't necessarily, you know, go to school past the age of 13?

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  And, and that are very much relegated to the home and they don't leave? And that's just customary because that's, that's the way that their life is. Their lives are actually going to get better. And I say that because. They don't have to face the daily bombings anymore. They don't have to deal with the ramifications of war, but their actual lives aren't gonna change, cuz they were never really privy to all those sort of new western-inspired, if you will, freedoms. So you can make the argument that, you know, for them, they now have a more peaceful life. But in the cities, that's where you really see

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  women and people losing a lot of those freedoms and suffering. But but what I think is also interesting that came out of this was the number of Taliban's that were embedded into the military, into the government, into every possible avenue in every city. And suddenly, when the Taliban's were able to take power, these people came out, people I knew for years and years and years who were working with journalists as fixers, said to me, "Oh yeah, I've been Taliban for twenty years." And now they're out, you know, and so and friends of mine, you know, I had a, you know, even with my fixer, a good friend of his, he was saying that someone he's known since he was very young, when the Taliban's took power, suddenly he finds out he's Taliban. Like, it's just

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  these people kept secrets for so long, and I think that's also why the Taliban's were able to come to power so quickly. They infiltrated every possible, you know, government entity that they could.

• 2:03:35Jocko Willink?

  What do they do? What's the Taliban doing with their, with the, with the military equipment that they took over?

• 2:03:41Speaker 01

  So, um, I, you know, it was interesting. So I did a tour of the airport just before I left and and you still see a lot of the damaged aircraft. The US blew up a lot of the aircraft before it left, but you see a lot, they still have all those Russian Russian helicopters that are still there and and they have a lot of engineers. They brought back a lot of the technicians from the previous government, trained by the US, that are now there able to, to help, you know, repair whatever they can. Um, and they still do have very limited air power, but I know that's something they're trying to build because the Air Force is something that, that they want, that they didn't have before. Um, and it was funny because I was, I was sitting outside, you know, one, one afternoon and

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  and you see there was, there was a big blast, a big bomb and, and the smokes in the air and it was just, it was down at the military hospital very close. And next thing you know, you're hearing choppers in the air and I said, "I haven't heard this for ages." You know, what's going on? And they were flying a Blackhawk and two of the, the Russian uh, MH17s and they had apparently dropped a suicide bomber onto the hospital cuz ISIS was attacking it. Again, they're still using suicide bombers for situations like that. But yeah, craziness. So it was a, it was an ongoing, it was an ongoing, you know, thing. But, but so they certainly have the capacity if they need it, but they're saying, oh, we're just gonna use it for important and urgent circumstances. So yeah, the whole thing is, is, is backwards.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  But yeah, I actually went to a suicide bombing school that I found, which was in a kindergarten on the edge of Kabul, where they train the suicide bombers. Um, you know, and you have these men just begging, begging to be chosen. Just pick me, pick me. It's like the highest honor that they could possibly take. And, and you know, that if despite being in government now, there's no plans to get rid of the suicide bombing schools.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  How about, what, what are you seeing for lessons as you look at it now? You're looking back on it. You've been gone for a week now. What are you looking at? What, what kind of big picture strategic lessons are you seeing?

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  My biggest thing that to, to, to drive home is, you know, we can talk all day about military strategies and, and the Taliban military strategies. But at the end of the day, a- and I feel like I'm a broken record saying this, but corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption. The last government backed by the US, there was so much corruption at every possible level, to the point where if you wanted to go and get an interview at the US embassy, just an interview, if you were a university graduate who wanted to, to get a job at the embassy, because that was, that was a cool thing to do, you had to pay a middle person about five thousand dollars just to get an interview, let alone if you were to get a job, then you'd pay them a whole bunch more. And that was in every government institution.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  Money, you know, and, and this is what I would get angry about, because I would tell a lot of these Afghans, I said, that's my money. As a US taxpayer, you stole our money, or not you personally, but your previous government, you stole our money. And you took that and you lined your pockets. Kabul could be Dubai by now, two trillion dollars, and this is what has come from it. And that is because the corruption on every level was just so rampant and so disgusting. And even, even when, you know, a lot of these warlords and people were fleeing the country when the Taliban's were taking over, there was just, there was chunks of gold that they were keeping, you know, hidden underground, just wads of cash that just unfathomable numbers and.

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  There was not a thing that you could do to get through daily life without paying a bribe. You know, to get through a checkpoint, you're paying a bribe, to get whatever you needed, like, life for Afghans was difficult because of this institutionalized corruption. That I think the US looked at and said, well, this is too systemic for us to do anything about, we just have to leave it. But really, to me, that was the root of the problem. So people looked at that, Afghans looked at that and were like, why am I starving here when this local governor is, is, you know, rolling around and with all this money and a Rolls Royce and all these fancy things. And I can't, you know, I have to pay every debt, every time just to get to my job.

• 2:07:51Speaker 01

  And that's what the, the Taliban really capitalized on that. They capitalized on, well, we are not going to be corrupt. You know, that's against Islam. We are going to, um, you know, support everybody, treat everybody the same. And so people that didn't even ideologically want to be, you know, with the Taliban's, they were driven to that. And I, I've seen that in many countries. You want to fight against the government that you feel is, is stealing from you. And i- it just got to the point where it was, it was so bad, you had, you had judges in provinces or lawyers, like just falsely accusing people of something and, and taking them to court so they could get bribe money. So i- i- it just, and it was just, it was on every possible level, even, even at the hospitals, you had medical staff

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  stealing the supply, supplies so they could go and sell them at a local pharmacy or because they owned their own pharmacy. And that was going to pay them better money than the government salary. So

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  uh, you know, it's i- i- if you're going to go into a country or give country any sort of form of foreign aid. I, I hope that the US or in the coun- other countries can learn that lesson of, if you don't stop that right in the beginning, if you don't hold people accountable. And there was, there was never accountability to any of the corruption or stolen money. This is the result you're gonna get. And I saw that in Iraq too. With, you know, people joining ISIS because they wanted to fight back against the government. Who they felt was stealing from them, were corrupt and was suppressing them. And it wasn't about, we wanna be part of ISIS because we agree with ISIS. It was, no, we, we wanna fight this government because they're not here for us.

• 2:09:24Jocko Willink?

  That's the, when you pull the string on Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government was just completely corrupt and a lot of the issues that they had were due to the exact same type of corruption. The whole, the whole um, system operated on through corruption and scratching each other's backs and, you know, getting money here and putting it in your own pockets and you know, that was just the way it worked and that was a huge part of the issues that they had and why. It's the exact same thing. It's literally the exact same thing, um, seeing it again. I know that, um. You know, you've been, you've been gone, so you were over there for August, September, October, November, December. That's like a, a deployment.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  A deployment into a, into a war zone where everything's falling apart. What is that?

• 2:10:13Jocko Willink?

  That's, I mean, are you coming back this time? What, how's it, how's it, how's the transition back to reality? Back to norm, norm, normal American life?

• 2:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was incredibly difficult, I think, for me to leave this time, um. I felt tremendously guilty about leaving because I knew that, that I can, as an Australian and an American, I can get, you know, I, I'm able to get a flight out to Abu Dhabi and, and able to leave freely. When it's something, obviously, a lot of Afghans want, and I felt tremendously guilty because again, you know, I, I never think my life is any more valuable than theirs. Um, I just happen to be lucky enough to be born in, in different geographical coordinates that have given me a different, a different passports and, and, um.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  And a very different life and you know the Afghans are some of the most truly beautiful people. They're just so hospitable, very kind. I have a great love for the Afghans. I always say that I've been to many places in the world, but I I've never quite sort of fallen in love with a place the way I've I've fallen in love with Afghanistan over the years and it's just it's very special people and I felt tremendously guilty um just I guess, you know, walking away from them and I knew that it was time to leave and I knew that um you know, some of the decisions that I felt that I was making um as a journalist were I I was taking risks that I knew were were were I shouldn't be taking um.

• 2:11:45Speaker 01

  And I think when you get to that point, when you sort of maybe don't care so much about the outcome, it's time to take a break. And that's sort of a point that I think that I'd gotten to, you know, especially with going into some of the ISIS areas and and even my photographer was hesitating and I was okay, I'm I'm fine. I and I didn't have the same I think normal reactions you should have to those situations, just you know, the natural sense of fear or or worry and and so anyway, so I I knew it was definitely time to take a break with that, but I think yeah, I I felt very guilty, especially those first few days. I I was just, you know, wanting to turn around and immediately go back. But um my first thing, so I couldn't go for a run and I'm a big runner and I couldn't go for a run for, you know, five months.

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  And so the first thing I did when I got to New York was go for a run. And I'm running and I look and I see a sign for a beauty salon on the sidewalk and I said, oh, they've reopened the beauty salons. That was my first instinct and I thought, hang on a minute, you you know, you're in New York City now, so you're not in Kabul. So um yeah, it's it's actually yeah, it's it's a it's a strange transition and as I said, when I'm driving down, I'm looking at the roads, thinking how great they are. You know, how great is this road? Why did nobody bomb this road? And then just remembering um remembering where I am. So it's um yeah, it's a little bit of a transition, but.

• 2:13:08Jocko Willink?

  And so how long are you gonna stay home for?

• 2:13:11Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't have a home right now, Doco. I don't.

• 2:13:14Jocko Willink?

  How long are you gonna sleep in places where there's beds?

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  I do need to get a home. Actually, that is the objective for, for early twenty, early twenty twenty two. Oh, scary. Um, I am going to get a home and so I have a good base. So I, I think I need to.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  In America?

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  Yes. So I can probably, probably Virginia, I think, maybe. I kinda like that area.

• 2:13:36Jocko Willink?

  And then what's on the horizon for, you know, what are you gonna do for work wise? Are you gonna, are you gonna, you know, you wrote Only Cry For The Living, which is an incredible book that really gives such clear picture of everything that went, went on um with the ISIS battlefield in the Levant. What, what are your plans on this stuff?

• 2:13:56Speaker 01

  So I have, so Jake and my photographer and I have a photo book we're working on and he's got some really just beautiful pictures of Afghanistan throughout this transition and then I, I'm going to knuckle down and get the writing for that done. Um, just sort of, it's a, a way to present, I guess, Afghanistan to people in a very visual way. Um, you know, just sort of showing people what, what it's like to, to be there through the fall and then in that period after and, and who the Afghans are, who the Taliban's are, who are all these different players. So that's uh the writing project I'm working on and then just, yeah, continuing to do journalism and little bits and pieces of, of different things here and there. So.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  How much writing is it gonna take to get that book done?

• 2:14:39Speaker 01

  Not a huge amount. It's not gonna be super word intensive because of the pictures. So probably I have so much material already. It's really just a matter of sitting down and, and sorting through what I think is gonna be the most compelling to go with the pictures that we've already selected. So.

• 2:14:54Jocko Willink?

  Kinda like a humans of New York, but more like humans of Afghanistan?

• 2:14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. And then sort of go into some of the, some of the decisions and some of the major things that were done and, and, and said and explain things in, in a, in a way that I hope people can resonate with, really.

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's that'll be uh that'll be awesome. I mean, I didn't think of that connection until just now, like the humans of New York, which is a fascinating book and and obviously your your Jake take just just unleashing picture after picture over there. I'm sure he's got incredible photographs and then the context that you can put around those and the history that you can put around them and the the knowledge that you have. That's um that'll be awesome.

• 2:15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so just uh yeah, continuing with the writing and then I will return to Afghanistan, probably in the spring is my is my plan if the Taliban will have me back if they're not too mad. It's a lot of the stuff I've written, some of them have been pretty mad.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  Do they contact you?

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  Um, sometimes they contact my fixer and and threaten and I had I had an issue with one Taliban for a long time that just drove me nuts. I had I was a little bit worried about him, actually.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  What did you say about?

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  He was just very angry about everything and angry and just just an angry person. Um, but eventually I just I just said, I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Come and get me. I don't care.

• 2:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, they can't get you here, but maybe.

• 2:16:16Speaker 01

  No, no, in Kabul. I I said, I thought, should I live? And they thought, no, I said, come and get me. Tell him to come and get me. Come to the house if he's worried. Come to the house. Cause he was like, where do you live? I said, yeah, come to the house. But anyway, he he backed off and went away. But most of them, um, I think, you know, I think they have a media team that tries to read through three, three, read through reports, but they're desperate for recognition. So they want they want attention, but they're increasingly becoming very um cracking down on a lot, which in the beginning they were very open and very free and it was quite easy to get the interviews. But toward the end, it became very difficult to to get any approval.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, I don't know. You kind of remind me of Alex Honnold. You know who that is?

• 2:16:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:17:00Jocko Willink?

  Alex Honnold is the rock climber that climbed El Cap without any ropes and he's they do like tests on him and there's no he has he registers less fear than a normal human. And I think you're kind of like that. I think you register less fear than a normal human. So El Cap is 3,000 feet in Yosemite, straight up granite, and he climbed it with no ropes. There's a uh incredible movie about it um called Free Solo.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  But I, when he did that, I remember just thinking, man, I hope that guy never climbs without ropes again. And of course, he does it all the time, because that's the way he is. So when you got back, I was kind of like, okay, cool. I hope you never go over there again. But I guess that's like asking Alex Holm not to do what he loves.

• 2:17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess, yeah, and I'm very grateful for the fact that I, I just, I feel very compelled and I, I really do love what I do and I don't, at this point in my life, I can't imagine not doing it. I don't know what, I don't know what I would do.

• 2:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Is it just like curiosity?

• 2:18:03Speaker 01

  It's curiosity, it's, it's just, it's been this rough draft of history that I just think is just a fascinating experience to have and, and it's something I really thought about a lot. You know, you're sitting with all these Taliban's and, and they're bragging about killing Americans and they're bragging about shooting down, um, you know, American helicopters and, and they're, you know, and I, I really had to reflect on it a little bit because I thought I'm in this situation, you know, what is my job here and, and and I think what journalists can do is it's, it's not to hear this stuff about being a voice and giving people platforms. No, that's not how I see my job. I see my job as being able to communicate the other to the people.

• 2:18:48Speaker 01

  And I say that because we have to understand the way that they think. And we want to, it's very easy to paint things as black and white, as, as, as this is the good guy, this is the bad guy. But you have to understand why they do what they do, where this comes from, what their impetus is. And, and that's the way that I sort of see a lot of journalism is not to go in and interrogate or to stick it to them or to, you, you just have to go in and have a conversation. And sometimes that's, I find it to be really difficult because, you know, he's somebody that's, that's, you know, bragging about killing Americans or, or, and yet you still have to go in there and have tea and talk to them and, and it's, it's a balance of, of sort of this compartmentalization with writing from a place of humanity.

• 2:19:33Speaker 01

  But I, I see that as, that communication as being something that, that really journalists can do.

• 2:19:40Speaker 01

  The best because you know, we aren't government employees, so we don't have to, we can speak to anyone we want and and I think it's an important job to be able to to understand, you know, where they're coming from and what that objective is and you know, one of them said something interesting and I'd love to get what your response would be because I didn't have a, I just didn't have a response. But he, he looked at me and he said, you know, if, how would you feel if I went to Australia? And I started recruiting Australians to kill other Australians, wouldn't you want to fight me back?

• 2:20:15Speaker 01

  I thought about it for a really long time and I didn't, I didn't have, I didn't have a great response because yeah, as I said earlier, Afghans were not the ones who who drove those planes into into New York, that was, they were Saudi. Osama was found in Pakistan. So we can sort of debate about what role Afghans really even had in those attacks. And so in putting myself in his shoes, you know, I didn't have a great response for,

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  how do you respond to that?

• 2:20:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's the important thing about what you said earlier, and this is something that we don't do a great job of, and by we, I mean, America and West, the West in general, is trying to understand what other people are thinking, right? And if you don't understand what other people are thinking, as a, I mean, this is what Sun Tzu said twenty five hundred years ago in The Art of War, you have to understand what your opponent, what your enemy is thinking. If you don't understand what they're thinking, your chances of winning go down dramatically. So anytime you try and impose your thoughts on the enemy, or you assume that you understand what they're thinking, you're making, you're making a huge mistake. You're making a huge strategic mistake when you let that happen.

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  So when you talk about what you do as a journalist of saying, okay, let me set my emotions aside and let me listen and let me ask earnest questions about what they're thinking and why they're feeling that way. And then you actually listen to what they have to say. That is something that people have, people should do every single day. First of all, as a leader in any organization, as a parent in in a family, as a child in a family, in a, in a spouse in a relationship, in a governmental situation.

• 2:21:59Jocko Willink?

  That's what we should do. That's what you need to learn how to do is try and understand what other people's perspectives are. And you can only understand what other people's perspectives are if you ask earnest questions and you actually listen to what they have to say. And you'll probably figure out that what you thought they thought is not accurate. So there's a, you know, there's a whole, a whole road to go down with that, but that's something that we don't do very well. And, you know, I think journalism nowadays is a whole, it's just a while. It's not what it used to be. Certainly. I think you're about as close to an old school journalist. I mean, you're, I mean, I know there's others that are like you, but you are in the model of the old school journalist that's out there to

• 2:22:42Jocko Willink?

  gather information and kind of report what's going on. And like you said, you know, you're reporting about what the, the, um, the new Northern Alliance was how well they fought. And you're like, oh, they, there wasn't much of a fight. And people are mad at you.

• 2:22:57Speaker 01

  Super mad.

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Super mad at you because you told what you saw. And now maybe if you would have said there was no fight and I didn't see, you know, there was no fight at all. And I don't remember your quotes from that article, but you know, it's like, hey, I didn't see any fighting. I saw, you know, the Taliban moving very dominantly through the area. So you're literally saying what you saw. You're, you're leaving room for, you even said today, you said, hey, there might've been more fighting in the mountains that I didn't see, but you're saying from what I saw on these heavily populated areas, there wasn't any resistance. Or there was very limited resistance. I saw one rocket. That's not a lot of resistance.

• 2:23:35Jocko Willink?

  So, um, I, I think that, that people listening, asking earnest questions is something that the world has forgot how to do. Part of it is, I would say the driving factor, and that is our own egos to think, well, I know. It's like the worst thing to say, the worst thing to say, and even in a worse thing to think is, I know. I know what you're thinking. I know what they're thinking. I know what the enemy is doing. You don't, you don't know. And the minute you think you know, is when you start making mistakes. It's when you start assuming that you understand things and you don't. So I think what you're doing is extremely important. Um, I'll still go with the Alex Honnold. I, I actually don't want you to go back to Afghanistan.

• 2:24:16Jocko Willink?

  But I know you're going to, um, be safe and, and we'll keep tracking on you.

• 2:24:23Jocko Willink?

  Anything, Echo, you got any questions? Yeah, what exactly is a fixer?

• 2:24:27Speaker 01

  So, sorry, a fixer is something that journalists or NGOs even, but primarily journalists. When we go into foreign countries, we hire sort of a local person. Sometimes they're a former journalist, sometimes they're just a connected person. And they, you know, help, often will be a translator. And they will help, sort of help us facilitate interviews and make calls and just kind of, yeah, work with us. So I'm sort of like, you know, I ended up calling my fix in a weed, a producer. So essentially, he's kind of like producing for us, you know, he's doing a lot of the background. And it was really funny when we went back this time because for the last 20 years, all the Afghans and the fixes have been speaking Dari, which is sort of an Afghan dialect of Persian.

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  But now it's all Pashto, everything's written in Pashto because that's, that's what the Taliban's use. So a lot of the people that were, you know, fixing for 20 years are suddenly like, well, I can't speak the language that's needed. So it was a big, big transition. A lot of the fixes have all left the country. So it was this very much a, we had to find new people to work with. So it was all the big learning curve.

• 2:25:33Jocko Willink?

  So it's kind of like the Las Vegas VIP host.

• 2:25:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I was about to throw it at you. I can hook you up with this guy for the interview, whatever. Echo has like the, you know, he's got that different background where he was in the nightclub industry for a while. So for him, it's like, oh, that's the VIP host. I can get you in that back room. Hold on, let me talk to Fred over here. We'll get you taken care of.

• 2:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my poor fixer is, you know, having to talk to the dash and all these people on my behest.

• 2:26:01Jocko Willink?

  Holly, we can find you at hollymckay.com. You're on Instagram, Holly S. And it's H O L L I E S McKay. McKay is just M C K A Y. You're on Twitter, you're on Facebook. It was crazy to watch you on Instagram when you were over there. And see you putting like Instagram Live up and you're reading like, oh, you're reading people's stories. Like I look at Echo's story, oh, it's like he's in his kitchen. He's making a freaking sandwich. Oh, I'm I'm posting that I just got done working out and you're like, I'm in a hotel in Mount Maurice, which is your Sharif and

• 2:26:40Speaker 01

  The Taliban's are outside, yeah.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second, this is interesting. So

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:45Jocko Willink?

  People should

• 2:26:46Speaker 01

  And hollymckay.substack.com, I think is the URL for

• 2:26:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay. So the Substack, that's where you're putting your information up. Awesome. Holly, anything else?

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me and for, yeah, letting me talk, talk some more about Afghanistan. I think it's very easy for these things to fall off the news once, once, you know, the evacuation happened and it fell off the sort of the radar very quickly. But I think it's something that's very important to Americans and important to, you know, to my generation who really grew up, you know, with after nine 11 and so many people that I knew that went to fight there. And I think it's important that that we keep Afghanistan, you know, somewhere in our minds.

• 2:27:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're certainly helping us to do that. And thank you for coming back to talk to us. And thank you for making it back to talk to us. And thanks for letting us know for all you do to go out there and let us know what's actually happening and reporting it so that the world knows what's really happening. It's definitely an eerie window into the heart of darkness and it's a big risk for you to go in there physically, mentally, spiritually, but you're doing meaningful work. And it does have a big impact on the world. So thanks for doing it.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 2:28:05Jocko Willink?

  Thanks, Holly.

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Hollie McKay has left the building. Awesome that she could stop by and

• 2:28:18Jocko Willink?

  kind of share some of that stuff with us. Lots of, lots of, lots of craziness in the world.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes seems like all that craziness that's going on in the world. What are you gonna do about it? How can you help it? Look. I don't know what you're gonna do for some young girl that's getting no education in Afghanistan right now. I'm not sure what you can do about that. I'm not sure. But I do know this. You've got a little control over your world. What's going on in your world? Try and make your world a little bit better. That's my recommendation.

• 2:28:55Speaker 02

  Man, that's crazy how she mentioned the corruption. You know, like how much of a, I mean, of course, no one's gonna be like, yeah, I'm totally down for corruption. No one's gonna think that for the most part. So, but you don't really understand how important that is to be like legit and squared away in that way.

• 2:29:11Jocko Willink?

  And I really had no idea what she was gonna say when I asked her that question. Because even, you know, reading through articles and stuff, you know, I thought maybe she'd have some strategic thing about the way we treated the, you know, just whatever, kind of the more, more common complaints that you'll hear about how Afghanistan was handled. And yeah, that was definitely very interesting and insightful aspect to bring up how devastating corruption can be. Because then, then it's kind of like nothing works the way it's supposed to work.

• 2:29:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Nothing works the way it's supposed to work. When people are corrupt, think about everything, the way things are supposed to be. They're not that way.

• 2:29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, she said something super quick too. She said super quick, but I was like, oh, that kind of put, add, add the corruption into this, this point where she said some of the ISIS fighters joined ISIS not because they support the ideology. It's just because their government is so corrupt and it's like, bro, like the government has so much power over an individual anyway. So if it's like they're corrupt and they're just tired of that corruptness and they're like, you know what? I'm gonna join this group who, sure, their stuff is kind of crazy, but at least I can fight back and have some power against this, this government that I'm powerless against that's corrupt, you know?

• 2:30:31Jocko Willink?

  We, we, it's two things going on. We take it for granted in America that things aren't corrupt. And we take it for granted in America that things aren't corrupt. Do you get my double meaning on this? What I'm saying is, we walk around like, oh, you know, well, this is American, things aren't corrupt here. But we take that for granted. And there's things that go on inside the government that are absolutely corrupt. Absolutely freaking corrupt. And the more that stuff grows, and also the more exposure it gets because of social media, and because the way people can share information and the way you can Google information. It's just a different world. And I think that the amount of information that's available is gonna start to become a light

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  on a lot of the corruption that's in the US government. In the, in now, and it's gonna get even more so in the future.

• 2:31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, yeah, like, when you get exposed for being like a whatever, some corrupt person, like in a, in a position of power, there, it seems like there's an element of shame that goes along with it when you get caught. Then, then again, I'm no expert in Afghanistan, so I don't know. But it seems like it's just so accept, more accepted in certain places, you know?

• 2:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, like, look at what just happened with the Cuomo guy from CNN. Why did they get that? Well, because he had texts going back and forth. That, that wouldn't have happened 20 years ago, maybe. 20, were we texting 20 years ago? Not too much. The first time I ever texted was

• 2:32:09Jocko Willink?

  we were in Vegas with Task Unit Bruiser and Leif and Seth were texting. And they started texting me. And I'm like, what are you doing? Just call me or whatever, because you're dumb, right? You don't know what's happening. I'm like, just freaking call me. And they're like, we'll send you a text when we get to wherever. And I'm like, just call me. Why are you gonna text me? And then sure enough, I'm sitting in some bar somewhere and it's super loud and Get the text. And then just responding.

• 2:32:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, the remember the teen, what do you call it? T nine word, you know, the one it's not now like a phone. It's like actual key.

• 2:32:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, I gotta, I gotta say I had a BlackBerry.

• 2:32:49Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  When I was the Admiral's aide, I got issued a BlackBerry.

• 2:32:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was.

• 2:32:53Jocko Willink?

  Then I had the BlackBerry and once you have a BlackBerry, it was hard to do anything else because they were freaking a super squared away little rig. Even my, I got the first iPhone, the very first iPhone that came out stoner went and got in line and got us both iPhones. And three days later, you had like a three day return policy. I took it back, got it, got my, got my BlackBerry back. The BlackBerry was a squared away little rig. And then now it gets crushed.

• 2:33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  Now it gets crushed by. Well, it gets crushed by the iPhone for sure.

• 2:33:24Speaker 02

  Kind of everything.

• 2:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause they thought they knew, they thought they had a lock.

• 2:33:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:27Jocko Willink?

  They were arrogant.

• 2:33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you gotta be.

• 2:33:29Jocko Willink?

  BlackBerry was arrogant.

• 2:33:31Speaker 02

  Isn't it funny how like even when you say I texted like texting is so new that we, the language didn't even catch up. We just assumed that, okay. Text is now a verb. So now we gotta accommodate, you know, so, because before then text is a noun. Now it's a noun and a verb. So now you need past tense, present tense, future, you know, all these additional things.

• 2:33:56Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm just saying, English major, you gotta relate to this kind of stuff. So you're like, oh yeah, he texted me. It's like, is texted a word? Well, I guess it is now. What's the past tense for text? Text, just text.

• 2:34:08Speaker 02

  He texted me.

• 2:34:09Jocko Willink?

  Texted in the past.

• 2:34:11Speaker 02

  Did, right? Has to be just T X T and then a E D. Yeah, texted. Yeah.

• 2:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Texted.

• 2:34:15Speaker 02

  But see how that's like a question, kind of texting.

• 2:34:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're not sure. It sounds weird. Texted doesn't sound quite right. It's a weird word to say.

• 2:34:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  So we gotta be careful of that.

• 2:34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do. Very careful.

• 2:34:29Jocko Willink?

  So there's corruption out there.

• 2:34:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:34:32Jocko Willink?

  Lots of craziness in the world. Like I said, try and make your world.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  As squared away as you can.

• 2:34:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  How do we do that?

• 2:34:41Speaker 02

  Stay capable, I'll tell you that. Stay capable, stay healthy. How about that?

• 2:34:46Jocko Willink?

  You should just go with the first thing in the top of your head that you've utilized. Say like, hey, I was tired the other day and I went and tried the new freaking pre-workout and it was savage. And I ended up jacking big steel.

• 2:35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, okay, I will, but it's not that story because when I tried it, when I took some pre-workout, I tried it a long time ago. When I took some pre-workout, eh, I wasn't tired. I just did it for the

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  Is this our pre-workout?

• 2:35:15Speaker 02

  Okay, for the mind-body connection experience while working out. Didn't let me down, full on. And it's kinda, and it's different. You can feel the difference like when you don't take it, because I don't take it all the time. Yeah, so that was my experience recently. That was the day before yesterday.

• 2:35:29Jocko Willink?

  Is there a moment where you say, oh, feeling this certain mode right now, gonna jump into, I'm gonna, gonna get that little extra hitter right now?

• 2:35:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  And what is it? What is the feeling?

• 2:35:39Speaker 02

  What do you mean? The feeling that compels that behavior?

• 2:35:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  It's pretty random. It's not when I'm tired though. Tired because it doesn't have enough caffeine for me to be like, oh, I'm tired, I need to take this. For the tiredness.

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Two scoops? That's whatever, almost 200 milligrams of caffeine. Come on, bro. What are you, a crackhead?

• 2:35:58Speaker 02

  I'm not ready for the two scoops yet.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Dude, JP, at five o'clock in the morning,

• 2:36:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:04Jocko Willink?

  He dry scooped the new pre-workout.

• 2:36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Chased it with sour apple sniper. Dry scooped another one and chased it again.

• 2:36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:19Speaker 02

  That's a little bit beyond, beyond my, uh, what my consumption capabilities. Either way, yes, pre-workout, I did that. I would say the, the more significant experience is with the energy drinks. That's the one.

• 2:36:33Jocko Willink?

  That's the one that gets you.

• 2:36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and very, very often, like I drink them a lot.

• 2:36:40Jocko Willink?

  How often do you drink them?

• 2:36:42Speaker 02

  I would say pretty much every day.

• 2:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:36:45Speaker 02

  Just one a day.

• 2:36:45Jocko Willink?

  What's your favorite flavor?

• 2:36:46Speaker 02

  Mango by far.

• 2:36:47Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent?

• 2:36:49Speaker 02

  By far, yeah.

• 2:36:49Jocko Willink?

  Do you have anything else on standby?

• 2:36:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of the rest of them.

• 2:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:36:53Speaker 02

  The citrus, I don't really drink as much.

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:36:57Speaker 02

  But either way, this is what you do midday. Okay, so I wake up, I don't really eat breakfast anymore.

• 2:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Me neither.

• 2:37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, so before lunch, I have one of those. It's good, so that's the good one.

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  By one of those, you mean one of these energy drinks?

• 2:37:10Speaker 02

  Discipline girl, yes, energy drink, healthy.

• 2:37:12Jocko Willink?

  I heard Henry Gracie reached out to you on the, on me utilizing the term energy drink.

• 2:37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Did he send a cease and desist?

• 2:37:18Speaker 02

  No, no, no, he liked it.

• 2:37:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:37:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:37:20Jocko Willink?

  Props to Henry.

• 2:37:21Speaker 02

  Yes, he says that that way. So yeah, energy drinks that are healthy, no sugar, sweet with monk fruit, good for you, healthier, you're better off after you drink them.

• 2:37:30Jocko Willink?

  Legitimately good for you.

• 2:37:31Speaker 02

  Yep, you pay no backend health price with these energy drinks. So yes, one a day is good.

• 2:37:38Jocko Willink?

  Here's another front end investment you can make into your life, into your world, is get joint warfare, get super krill. So that way you can proactively fight the mayhem that you're causing to your own joints.

• 2:37:54Speaker 02

  It's true, you know how like you take things for granted? Joints are that, and as far as back to my experience, I have been taking my joints for granted. Luckily, I haven't like had any kind of terrible learning experience to remind me of that. I just every once in a while, it's I get hit with it, like for how old I am, I feel like I don't really have any joint problems.

• 2:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you gotta, you know what you gotta do too? You gotta continue to do, you gotta continue to do the work.

• 2:38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  Man, you gotta, you don't surrender any positions.

• 2:38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Don't surrender any positions, like your workout positions. Like for me, overhead squat.

• 2:38:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Overhead squat, like I hurt my arm real bad, remember when Dean Lisch?

• 2:38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  And I could not lock out my arm, I could not do an overhead squat, couldn't do it, zero. And then finally it started healing and it took months and months and months. By the time it was healed, my body had kind of forgot how to do an overhead squat.

• 2:38:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:38:51Jocko Willink?

  And so the first time I tried to do an overhead squat again, my body forgot how to do it. And it felt terrible and I couldn't use any weight, like barely any weight, I was using the bar. And part of that little ego in the back of my mind, the little complacency in the back of my mind was like, you know what, overhead squat's not that big of a deal. You should, you know, you don't really need to do overhead squat.

• 2:39:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:39:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, and then I said to myself, no, if you surrender that movement. If you don't do that movement, you, it's gonna go away forever.

• 2:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  So I'm very cognizant of that. That's why another thing like going deep on squats. The minute you're like, well, you know, I don't need to go that deep. I'm gonna go heavy, so I'm gonna go less deep. No, actually, don't do that.

• 2:39:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct.

• 2:39:35Jocko Willink?

  You wanna do that occasionally? Okay, I get it. We're, we're, we're doing muscle confusion, right? But don't, you gotta keep those, keep those movements alive, man. Keep them alive.

• 2:39:48Speaker 02

  And now that you mention, that's what reminded me of that, deep squats. So like, okay, so deep squats, if you, let's say, cause some people don't have what, the ankle, what do you call it, mobility or for that. But if you have ankle mobility and then you don't do them for a while and then try to do them, you'll feel like, oh, wait, I gotta get my ankle, like, mobility kinda back, you know? And here's the thing, when you say you lose it forever, it's in, it's not like you stop doing it and then it's gone, gone. You, you, it's, you stop doing it, then when you start doing it, it's like, you get it back, but not all of it. You paid like a little tax as time goes on.

• 2:40:21Jocko Willink?

  And the longer you wait, the longer it might take to get back.

• 2:40:24Speaker 02

  The bigger the tax is.

• 2:40:25Jocko Willink?

  Same with muscle ups. When I could hurt my arm, couldn't do muscle ups, couldn't do them, you know? By the time I started doing muscle ups again, I could do one.

• 2:40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  Like it was, and it was not fun.

• 2:40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  And so then I was like, okay, well, today I'm gonna do three in my whole workout. I'm gonna do three muscle ups. You know what I mean?

• 2:40:42Speaker 02

  You doing the rings?

• 2:40:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, ring muscle ups. So it's one of those things, that's, you know what this is? This is a little, a little tool to you, you put in your brain to think when you have the moment where you're saying, you know what, I'm not gonna do this particular exercise today. Just remember, you're surrendering that movement and I'm telling you, please, don't do it. So there you go.

• 2:41:03Speaker 02

  Don't surrender.

• 2:41:04Jocko Willink?

  Surrender any movements.

• 2:41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't take it for granted either. Take the joint worse clear, take the krill oil, that'll help physically keep your joints in the game. That's, that's on top of you keeping it in the routine.

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Molk, you're gonna need, let's face it, you're gonna need to rebuild. If you're doing overhead squats, you're gonna need to rebuild.

• 2:41:19Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:41:20Jocko Willink?

  So you're gonna need some molk, some extra additional protein. That just so happens to taste like.

• 2:41:26Speaker 02

  Dessert banana cream pie if we're into it that's the new one banana cream bomber.

• 2:41:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:32Speaker 02

  Who thought of that name you?

• 2:41:34Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, maybe.

• 2:41:35Speaker 02

  Maybe Pete. It's good too. The design is good. I was I was on Origin USA, the website.

• 2:41:41Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:41:41Speaker 02

  And they got whoever designed that that website Pete, I'm just assuming Pete.

• 2:41:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but well, Pete definitely designed the the banana bomber thing.

• 2:41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:50Jocko Willink?

  You know, he's super into the, you know.

• 2:41:52Speaker 02

  That's good. He's good, man.

• 2:41:53Jocko Willink?

  He likes his little designs.

• 2:41:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:41:55Jocko Willink?

  Me, I'm like, just make it a black bottle, ripe banana on it.

• 2:41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:00Jocko Willink?

  He sends me options.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  He sends me options.

• 2:42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:03Jocko Willink?

  What do you think of this? What do you think of this? I'm like, bro, ripe banana. So there you go.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, you like you bring it back down like when, you know, because.

• 2:42:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, let's face it, dude. If Pete was running like had full.

• 2:42:15Speaker 02

  Creative.

• 2:42:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the freaking banana, the milk would come in like a giant banana shaped bottle.

• 2:42:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, like he'd get too creative.

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:23Speaker 02

  But then, yeah, then you're like the dichotomy and whatever, bringing it back down to where it needs to be.

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  Trying to balance things down a little bit.

• 2:42:28Speaker 02

  It's perfect. It's all perfect in my opinion.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  So Origin USA.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Origin USA, yeah. America made stuff.

• 2:42:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wait, but what about for the drinks? You can get the drinks at Wawa, by the way. You can also get everything at the vitamin shop. So check those out. And then you were saying Origin USA.

• 2:42:44Speaker 02

  Yes, Origin USA.

• 2:42:45Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu, you were talking about jeans?

• 2:42:48Speaker 02

  Jeans, all that stuff. Everything at Origin is made in America, straight up. Even the materials are made in America. It's an American, uh, economic thing.

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  They, uh, what do you call this?

• 2:43:05Jocko Willink?

  This sucks. It's recording right now, doesn't it?

• 2:43:08Speaker 02

  No, I, the thing, no.

• 2:43:10Jocko Willink?

  Editing that.

• 2:43:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no, we're.

• 2:43:11Jocko Willink?

  Painted yourself in a corner.

• 2:43:13Speaker 02

  No, we don't have to. It could be because it is a full on American thing.

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you're true.

• 2:43:17Speaker 02

  It is. Well, it's not American thing.

• 2:43:18Jocko Willink?

  I'll stand now.

• 2:43:19Speaker 02

  So, okay, so, uh, bringing back certain elements of the of the industry to the point where it's almost it's kind of bringing back an industry.

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Bring back all elements of the industry.

• 2:43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:32Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 2:43:33Speaker 02

  Freaking all in one, straight up.

• 2:43:35Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, you can get ghee's, which you should definitely get some ghee's, which by the way, the ghee's are not. This isn't your, this isn't your father's ghee. This isn't your mother's ghee. This is a new deal. Those ghee's are so freaking nice. Get yourself one of those ghee's.

• 2:43:51Jocko Willink?

  Also, just kinda FYI, we're making some stuff for hunting.

• 2:43:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:56Jocko Willink?

  We're making a hunting, it's not just some stuff, we're making a hunting line.

• 2:44:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a bunch of.

• 2:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so when you roll out in hunting season, you can do it wearing American-made gear.

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  We'll keep you posted on that.

• 2:44:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:44:12Jocko Willink?

  What else?

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  Oh, you said the boots, jeans, there's some, well, I said, cool accessories on there. And I, and I went.

• 2:44:18Jocko Willink?

  Accessories.

• 2:44:19Speaker 02

  Right, I'm telling you, you make it sound like that, but like, look at the belt, you won't be like, accessories, you'll be like, oh, that, I'm getting that belt. I'm getting that wallet. The wallet's kind of a minimalist wallet, though. So if you're not into minimalist wallets, then, you know, maybe just stick with the belt.

• 2:44:32Jocko Willink?

  Maximus wallet, too, not Maximus, but there's a more, more.

• 2:44:35Speaker 02

  Robust.

• 2:44:36Jocko Willink?

  Robust, there you go.

• 2:44:37Speaker 02

  Alright, there you go.

• 2:44:38Jocko Willink?

  With the low cap coming in hot.

• 2:44:40Speaker 02

  Just trying to help, I'm just trying to. Nonetheless, a lot of good stuff on there, all made in America, um, and, and good quality stuff. So it's like from top to bottom, that's kind of the go-to when you think about it. So yeah, originusa.com also.

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Did I say Jaco Fuel.com? I didn't. Jaco Fuel.com, if you want that, if you want that, uh, the, the supplement side of the house, Jaco Fuel.com.

• 2:45:02Speaker 02

  All good. Um, yeah, but yeah, Jaco has a store as well. That's where you can get Discipline Equals Freedom stuff, shirts, apparel, shirts, hats, hoodies. Hoodies are back in.

• 2:45:12Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:45:13Speaker 02

  It's winter.

• 2:45:15Speaker 02

  It's kinda colder here.

• 2:45:17Jocko Willink?

  And then there's the Shirt Locker, which, brief description Shirt Locker, what do you got?

• 2:45:22Speaker 02

  It is a creative, um, let's just, okay, but on the basic level, it's a new shirt every month.

• 2:45:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:45:29Speaker 02

  But the designs are a little bit different, a little bit more, there are more layers to the designs, you know, they're funner, I guess.

• 2:45:37Jocko Willink?

  Remember when Jaco podcasted, it was a whole thing about like layers?

• 2:45:40Speaker 02

  Yes. There is still a whole thing about layers.

• 2:45:43Jocko Willink?

  Thing about layers.

• 2:45:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:45:45Jocko Willink?

  It's almost like it's just the underground. It's part of it.

• 2:45:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:45:49Jocko Willink?

  This layers. So there's layers in the t-shirts.

• 2:45:51Speaker 02

  Yep. There's more to it than just a straightforward design.

• 2:45:55Jocko Willink?

  If you listen, you know.

• 2:45:56Speaker 02

  If you listen.

• 2:45:56Jocko Willink?

  If you listen, you know. If you're in the game, you know what's up.

• 2:45:59Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:46:00Jocko Willink?

  If you're not, you'll be like, oh, yeah. But if you could do.

• 2:46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's the whole thing about the layers as far as layers go. Look, if you're not in the game, you look at the design, you'd be like, oh, man, that's cool.

• 2:46:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:08Speaker 02

  And I get a cool one every month. Cool. But if you listen and you know, you know, the other layers in it. So now you get the cool design on the front end, but then you get the, you know, the meaning, the dish.

• 2:46:19Jocko Willink?

  The dish.

• 2:46:20Speaker 02

  And so all good. Check that out. It's on jocko store.com.

• 2:46:23Jocko Willink?

  Hey, subscribe to the podcast. Also subscribe to Jocko Unraveling. Rolling out some Christmas cheer with my boy DC, talking about all kinds of lovely subjects. Um, grounded podcast. We got the Warrior Kid podcast. Also, you can join the underground, speaking of underground, jocko underground.com. We got a little something that we had to set up just in case tyrannical forces take over. We gotta have a place to go. We got a place to go. It's called Jocko Underground, jocko underground.com. If you want to help us in there, if you want to help us be ready for any contingencies that might unfold, you can subscribe. It's eight dollars and 18 cents a month. We got an additional little podcast on there. We answer your questions and whatnot.

• 2:47:03Jocko Willink?

  If you can't afford it, it's cool. We still want you in the game. Go to [email protected]. [email protected]. There you go.

• 2:47:11Speaker 02

  It's true. Also, we have a YouTube channel.

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:47:14Speaker 02

  The video version of this podcast. Some excerpts on there and some also some additional content. As it were. You're gonna have to check it out to see what it is. But yeah, every once in a while, we'll put some additional stuff on there that that turns out to be interesting. You'll see what Jocko, uh, can't live without. Get that kind of video sometimes.

• 2:47:36Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Psychological Warfare, MP3 tracks to keep you on the path. We got flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer selling stuff to hang on your wall. We got books.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Only Cry for the Living, I mentioned it today. It's Hollie McKay's first book. We covered on podcast number 271. You can get that from Jaco Publishing.com. Jaco Publishing.com. This is actually a book that I published. Why? Because it's a freaking epic story from somebody that spent time on the battlefield when ISIS was being fought and pushed back. And she interviewed people from ISIS, which is crazy. So if you want to check that out, you can go to Jaco Publishing.com. Also, final spin. It's a story. It's a novel. It's a poem. It's a manuscript. It's a freaking wild

• 2:48:34Jocko Willink?

  emotional ride. Don't read it when you're in front of people because you might be crying. Don't read it when you gotta be quiet because you might be laughing. Final spin. I wrote it. Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols, Field Manual, Warrior Kid, 1, 2, 3, and 4. That's the Christmas gift. That's the Christmas gift. You're wondering, oh, what did I get this little kid? That's the gift. Get him the, get him all books. All books. Way of the Warrior Kid, 1, 2, 3, and 4. There is no better gift you can get for a kid than those books. If you got a little kid, get him Mikey and the Dragons. Little Mikey and the

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Dragons. Let him learn to overcome fear. About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. I wrote the foreword on the new version. And then Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, who I wrote with my brother Leif Bavin. Speaking of Leif, we have a leadership consultancy. If you need help inside your organization from a leadership perspective, which if you have any issues inside your organization, whatever problems you have, they're leadership problems. Leadership is the solution. Go to EchelonFront.com for that. If you want to come to one of our line of live events, you can check it out there.

• 2:49:52Jocko Willink?

  We also have the online training academy, extremeownership.com. It's a online leadership training academy. You can bring your team in there. You can get everyone aligned. You can get your whole company engaged in that, or you can just do it yourself. But you don't become a good leader overnight and you don't, you're not just born a good leader. Just like you're not born a good guitar player. You're not. Don't care who you are. You've got to pick up and practice and learn. That's what the academy is for. Pick up, practice, learn for leadership. Go to extremeownership.com. You want to ask me a question? I'm there. You can literally just sit there and talk to me.

• 2:50:33Jocko Willink?

  Three times a week, two or three times a week, I'm there answering questions live. So check that out, extremeownership.com. If you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate to that, you want to get involved. She is helping so many veterans. Go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want any more of my looming lectures, or you need more of Echo's random retorts, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook.

• 2:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Echo's at Echo Charles. I'm at Jock Wink. Holly is on Instagram, on Twitter. She's Holly S. McKay. Also HollyMcKay.com. That's where you can find her Substack as well, where people, it's a new method of putting information out there. The Substack? Yeah. A lot of journalists are using it. It's kind of like a Patreon, but it's not being controlled. And they're allowing free speech, which apparently Patreon was not. Substack. Substack. It's cool.

• 2:51:55Jocko Willink?

  Finally, um, thanks to Holly. You can hear, uh, what she does, the risk she takes to inform and educate the world. So thank you Holly for doing that. People, people who do not know history are doomed to repeat it and someone has to uncover history. I liked what she said about history, history, rough draft, the rough draft of history. So someone's got to go out and grab that information. People like Holly, they go and do that. Thank you Holly for your hard work and bravery to make that happen. And the people in uniform out there, thank you for doing your best to confront and stop evil in the world and keep us all safe. And that includes our police

• 2:52:38Jocko Willink?

  and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe right here at home. And everyone else out there, there is evil in the world and there is good. And we have to be on guard and we have to be vigilant, vigilant against evil, vigilant against corruption.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  These thoughts and ideas can creep from person to person and from mind to mind like a disease. So stay vigilant, stay prepared, tell the truth, look out for each other. And, and try and keep your part of the world. Try and make your part of the world as good as you can and help other people do the same. And until next time, Zeko and Jaco, out.